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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT   OF   CAPT.   AND    MRS. 
PAUL  MCBRIDE  PERIGORD 


IffinVERSITY  of  CAU^OK^J> 
AT 
LOS  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 


Some  Fundamental 
Verities  in   Education 

BY 

MAXIMILIAN  P.  E.  GROSZMANN,  Pd.  D. 

AutJior  of  '•  The  Oareer  of  the  Ohild  " 

With  a  Symposium  Preface  by  Frederick   B.   Bolton, 
W.  Grant  Chambers,  A.  B.  Poland,  H.   H.  Home 

ILLUSTRATED 


RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

THE   GORHAM   PRESS 
BOSTON 


136-183 


Copyright,  1911,  by  Richard  G.  Badger 
All  Rights  Roterved 


ThP  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


SYMPOSIUM  INTRODUCTION 

I 

FREDERICK  E.  BOLTON.  .  .  .Page    III 

II 

W.  G.  CHAMBERS Page  VII 

III 

A.  B.  POLAND Page     X 

IV 
H.  H.  HORNE Page  XV 


INTRODUCTION 
I 

The  principles  enunciated  by  Dr.  Grosz- 
mann  in  this  booklet  were  daring  prophecies 
a  score  of  years  ago.  When  the  author  first 
wrought  out  and  tested  experimentally  the 
ideas  therein  expressed  there  were  many,  as 
the  present  writer  well  remembers,  who  con- 
sidered such  doctrines  as  "fads."  But  Dr. 
Groszmann  and  others  saw  clearly,  tested 
courageously,  and  demonstrated  beyond  ca- 
vil that  the  "new  fangled  notions"  and 
"fads"  were  indeed  fundamental  verities  in 
educational  procedure. 

No  one  has  demonstrated  more  thoroughly 
than  Dr.  Groszmann  that  the  processes  of 
education  can  not  be  wisely  administered  by 
those  who  possess  only  knowledge  of  the 
subject  matter  and  "common  sense."  Edu- 
cation is  a  science  as  well  as  an  art  and  the 
educator  must  have  scientific  knowledge  of 
the  growth  and  unfoldment  of  the  powers  of 
the  being  to  be  educated. 

The  great  topic  of  the  day  is  "conserva- 
tion," but  only  the  prophetic  yet  understand 
that  the  supreme  problem  of  conservation  is 
iii 


INTRODUCTION 

the  conservation  of  human  mentality.     This 
must  be   accomplished  by  prevision   in  de- 
tecting the  moments  of  germination  of  the 
unfolding  possibilities  of  the  awakening  be- 
ing.    Dr.  Groszmann  long  ago  foresaw  that 
education  is  a  problem  in  psychogenetic  sci- 
ence.    The  various  examples  which  he  has 
used   to   illustrate   his   principles,   especially 
those  drawn  from  the  realms  of  motor  ac- 
tivities  and  artistic  impulses,   all  show  the 
fact  of  nascent  periods  in  development.   Un- 
mindful, however,  of  these  inexorable  laws 
of  growth,  many  a  course  of  study  ignores 
the    true    order    of    development    and   pre- 
scribes abstract  studies  at  a  time  when  motor 
activities  predominate  and  place  the  simple, 
concrete  and  motor  activities  at  a  time  when 
the  mind  should  have  become  capable  of  sus- 
tained abstract  thinking.    How  long  shall  we 
be  obliged  to  witness  the  spectacle  of  boys 
and  girls  prattling  the  dry  forms  of  abstract 
grammar  and  arithmetic  at  a  time  when  they 
would  so  delight  in  making  things,  drawing, 
and  painting,  learning  the  elements  of  sci- 
ence, becoming  masters  in  speaking  foreign 
languages,   etc.?     Later,   In   college,   about 
half  of  their  time  Is  occupied  with  learn- 
ing   details   which    could   have   been   more 
iv 


INTRODUCTION 

easily  and  certainly  mastered  a  decade  be- 
fore. A  recognition  of  the  fundamental 
verities  in  education  suggested  by  the  au- 
thor would  make  impossible  such  atrocities 
committed  in  the  name  of  education. 

No  truth  is  expressed  better  by  the  author 
than  the  important  idea  that  education  is 
not  a  process  of  filling  minds,  but  rather  a 
matter  of  stimulating  to  natural  expression. 
Happily  we  are  coming  to  recognize  inter- 
est as  a  means,  and  expression  as  an  end  of 
all  true  education.  The  individual  develops 
only  through  expression  and  he  is  stimulated 
to  expression  only  by  becoming  genuinely  in- 
terested. Interests  are  also  coming  to  be 
recognized  as  direct  functions  of  instincts 
and  stages  of  development. 

As  Dr.  Groszmann  indicates,  the  ideas  ex- 
pressed in  this  book  are  no  longer  new  ideas. 
Happily,  through  the  heroic  and  far-sighted 
work  of  the  author  and  others  who  have  in- 
dependent ideas  and  the  courage  to  advance 
them,  educational  practice  in  the  better 
schools  is  coming  to  be  well  in  line  with  the 
principles  maintained.  But  even  now  the 
general  public,  the  parents  of  the  children 
to  be  educated  in  our  schools,  have  a  very 
vague  idea  of  the  significance  of  these  prin- 

V 


INTRODUCTION 

ciples  which  are  revolutionizing  our  pro- 
cesses of  teaching  and  education,  and  which 
are  in  strong  contrast  to  the  traditional 
school  courses. 

It  is  hoped  that  this  little  book,  though 
tardy  in  appearing,  may  serve  as  a  guide  to 
many  who  still  seek  light  and  may  give  cour- 
age to  many  others  who  understand  but  who 
lack  the  courage  of  their  convictions. 
Frederick  E.  Bolton, 

School  of  Education, 
The  State  University  of  Iowa, 

Iowa  City,  la. 


v> 


II 


The  time  is  past  when  a  justification  of 
constructive  and  artistic  activities  in  educa- 
tion is  demanded  by  leaders  in  educational 
thought.  However,  the  frequent  outbursts 
in  the  public  press  against  the  fads  and  frills 
of  the  modern  school  suggest  that  the  lay 
mind  is  not  yet  at  rest  in  this  matter. 

Dr.  Groszmann's  little  book,  which  I  have 
read  with  much  pleasure,  and  which  is,  in  a 
sense,  an  elaboration  of  certain  points  pre- 
sented in  his  earlier  book  on  "The  Career 
of  the  Child",  presents  in  simple  form,  with 
numerous  illustrations,  the  chief  justification 
for  art  and  industry  in  education.  Dr. 
Groszmann's  long  experience  both  as  an  ad- 
ministrator in  well  known  schools  and  as  a 
student  of  the  hfe  of  exceptional  children, 
makes  his  judgment  as  to  the  function  of  ac- 
tivity, construction,  and  art  creation,  as 
these  processes  affect  the  normal  develop- 
ment of  the  mind,  especially  valuable. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting,  certainly 
the  most  original,  feature  of  the  book  is  the 
development  of  the  conception  of  the  "cul- 
ture epochs"  in  the  sphere  of  art.  The  au- 
thor has  worked  out  quite  a  convincing  argu- 
vii 


INTRODUCTION 

ment  in  two  parallel  series  of  illustrations, 
one  set  selected  from  the  work  of  children, 
the  other  from  survivals  of  primitive  art. 
This  demonstration  supplements  nicely,  on 
the  side  of  expression,  the  older  form  of  the 
theory  of  "culture  epochs"  which  emphasized 
chiefly  the  child's  interests.  The  experi- 
ment from  which  Dr.  Groszmann's  theory 
emerged  was  worked  out  many  years  ago 
in  the  Ethical  Culture  Schools,  then  under 
his  direction. 

The  complete  education  in  our  day  in- 
cludes more  than  preparation  for  industrial 
success— more  than  conventional  knowkdge 
— more  than  social  efficiency.  It  must  in- 
clude an  appreciation  of  the  goodness  and 
beauty  in  the  world  in  which  the  individual 
is  to  live.  Mental  sanity  depends  no  less  on 
the  processes  of  construction,  representation, 
and  appreciation,  than  it  has  long  been 
known  to  depend  on  normal  perception, 
judgment,  analysis,  and  all  the  rest.  The 
suggestion  herein  developed  that  these  ex- 
pressive activities  develop  in  an  order  de- 
termined by  racial  evolution,  along  with  their 
underlying  interests,  while  not  wholly 
unique,  is  very  cleverly  and  clearly  illus- 
trated. It  is  no  mere  figure  of  speech  to 
viii 


INTRODUCTION 

speak  of  the  principles  brought  out  In  this 
little  book  as  "Some  Fundamental  Verities 
In  Education". 

W.  G.  Chambers, 
School  of  Education, 
University  of  Pittsburg,  Pittsburg,  Pa. 


IX 


ni 


Progress  in  elementary  school  education, 
during  the  last  twenty-five  years  in  the  United 
States,  has  been  rapid.  Aims  have  broad- 
ened, method  less  often  consists  in  memor- 
izing facts  from  a  text  book,  and  results  in 
general  show  that  the  average  grammar 
school  graduate  of  to-day  has  acquired  in 
school  a  better  knowledge  of  the  3  R's  than 
did  his  predecessor  of  a  generation  ago. 
Moreover,  the  grammar  school  graduate  of 
to-day  has  learned  in  school  to  do  a  great 
many  useful  things  such  as  drawing,  manual 
training,  sewing,  cooking  and  the  like.  But 
despite  all  this  there  exists,  as  always  hereto- 
fore, a  widespread  dissatisfaction  with  the 
results  achieved.  Investigations  such  as  that 
recently  had  in  Baltimore  and  such  as  that 
now  being  conducted  in  New  York  City,  bear 
witness  to  the  unrest  and  dissatisfaction  of 
the  public  at  large. 

For  twenty-five  years  or  longer  there  has 
been  developing  gradually  a  public  self- 
consciousness  of  the  insufficiency  of  former 
aims  in  education  to  meet  modern  social  and 
industrial  needs.  With  the  increasing  wealth 
of  the  country  the  disposition  to  realize  new- 


INTRODUCTION 

er  aims  has  grown  pari  passu,  until  wc  now 
find  the  public  mind  altogether  unsettled  and 
at  times  reactionary. 

The  chief  cause  alleged  for  present  dissat- 
isfaction with  the  schools  is  the  congested 
course  of  study  which  by  natural  implication 
leads  to  the  conviction  that  essentials  are  be- 
ing neglected;  second  to  this  is  the  rapidly 
growing  cost  of  school  maintenance.  To  de- 
fend the  latter  by  comparison  with  the  in- 
creased cost  of  living  is  useless;  the  public 
might  perhaps  be  satisfied  if  they  were  get- 
ting what  they  demand,  namely,  a  more  per- 
fect knowledge  of,  and  skill  in,  the  3  R's. 
To  convince  the  public  that  these  studies  are 
being  taught  much  better  than  they  were  a 
generation  ago  before  the  newer  studies  had 
been  introduced,  seems  to  be  futile.  The 
public  will  not  believe  it,  for  the  time  given, 
it  is  said,  is  inadequate ;  moreover,  the  facts, 
it  is  alleged,  do  not  warrant  it. 

If  attention  is  called  to  such  comparative 
tests  as  have  been  made  in  Norwich  (Conn.), 
Springfield  (Mass.),  and  Cleveland  (Ohio), 
showing  as  they  do  in  each  instance  that  bet- 
ter results  are  being  obtained  in  the  3  R's 
than  formerly,  the  public  is  still  unconvinced. 

Occasionally  educators  themselves,  by 
xi 


INTRODUCTION 

their  public  confessions,  add  fuel  to  the 
flames  of  popular  dissatisfaction.  Thus  the 
National  Education  Association  at  its  Cleve- 
land meeting,  in  the  year  1908,  adopted  in 
its  declaration  of  principles  a  resolution  to 
the  effect  that  "diversified  and  overburdened 
courses  of  study  in  the  grades"  should  be 
subordinated  to  a  "thorough  drill  in  the  es- 
sential subjects." 

It  is  unfortunate,  indeed,  that  we  have  no 
adequate  standards  by  which  to  measure  the 
products,  and  hence  the  progress,  of  edu- 
cation. True,  for  some  time  back,  the  Na- 
tional Bureau  of  Education,  the  Russell 
Sage  Foundation  and  other  independent 
agencies  have  attempted,  with  greater  or 
less  success,  to  determine  the  relative  efli- 
ciency  of  schools  and  school  systems  in  the 
cities  of  the  United  States.  The  methods 
pursued,  however,  have  been  solely  quanti- 
tative. Facts  concerning  the  number  of  pu- 
pils who  leave  school  before  completing  the 
prescribed  course  of  study,  facts  concerning 
the  number  of  pupils  who  repeat  the  work  of 
the  several  grades,  and  figures  to  show  the 
probable  additional  cost  entailed  by  such 
repeating,  are  all  quantitative  and  discover 
little  or  nothing  of  the  qualitative,  or  real, 
xii 


INTRODUCTION 

aspects  of  education.  Information  of  the 
latter  kind  can  be  ascertained  only  by  an  en- 
tirely different  method,  namely,  that  of  ex- 
amining pupils  as  to  their  actual  proficiency 
in  the  studies  taught  and  in  their  capacity  to 
do  things.  Until,  in  fact,  such  tests  have 
been  applied,  it  will  be  impossible  to  show 
statistically  the  measure  of  progress  made 
by  the  schools,  great  as  we  ourselves  believe 
it,  and  personally  know  it,  to  have  been. 
Meanwhile,  the  broader  aims  and  better 
methods  advocated  by  Dr.  Groszmann  have 
helped  the  situation  immeasurably. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  reactionary  ten- 
dency, the  last  session  of  the  Legislature  of 
the  State  of  New  Jersey  amended  its  school 
laws,  by  enacting  a  provision  requiring  a 
uniform  State  examination  in  order  to  grad- 
uate pupils  from  a  grammar  school  into  a 
high  school.  The  examination  extends  to 
the  3  R's  only,  including  geography  and  his- 
tory of  the  United  States. 

The  practical  results  of  such  legislation, 
if  allowed  to  remain  on  the  statute  books, 
can  not  be  other  than  to  set  back  the  wheels 
of  progress  a  generation  at  least.  It  will 
cause,  necessarily,  undue  emphasis  to  be  laid 
on  the  purely  formal,  or  examinable,  as- 
xiii 


INTRODUCTION 

pects  of  the  common  school  branches ;  it  will 
cause  most  teachers  to  ignore  to  a  very  large 
extent  the  real  elements  of  knowledge  in 
which,  rather  than  the  formal,  educators  of 
late  have  been  more  deeply  concerned.  The 
raison  d'etre  for  such  reactionary  legislation 
is  to  be  found  in  (a)  inability  to  appreciate 
the  fundamental  conceptions  of  what  is 
needed  in  an  industrial  democracy,  (b)  over- 
appreciation  of  the  utility  of  an  elementary 
school  curriculum  in  which  undue  emphasis 
is  placed,  as  in  this  case,  on  the  3  R's.  It  is 
the  purpose,  I  take  it,  of  Dr.  Groszmann  in 
bringing  out  this  last  monograph  to  combat, 
so  far  as  possible,  this  reactionary  tendency. 
The  writer  takes  pleasure  in  being  able 
to  recall  vividly  the  utterances  of  Dr. 
Groszmann  made  in  the  early  90's  along 
these  lines.  These  early  utterances  were  re- 
garded by  many  of  the  best  educators  in 
New  York  and  vicinity,  who  were  fortunate 
enough  to  hear  them,  as  doubtless  sound  in 
theory  but  too  visionary  and  remote  to  be 
put  into  immediate  practice.  Indeed,  the 
looked  upon  at  that  date  as  being  an  educa- 
looked  upon  at  that  date,  as  being  an  educa- 
tional experiment  of  very  doubtful  value. 
But  times  have  changed  and  a  better  phil- 
xiv 


INTRODUCTION 

osophy  now  prevails.  That  Dr.  Grosz- 
mann's  views  have  been  so  generally  ac- 
cepted among  the  educators  in  all  parts  of 
the  country  must  be  to  him  a  matter  of  great 
personal,  as  well  as  professional  gratifica- 
tion, 

I  consider  "The  Career  of  the  Child"  and 
its  companion  book  "Some  Fundamental 
Verities  in  Education"  as  valuable  and  time- 
ly contributions.  They  can  not  fail  to  be 
gratefully  received  by  the  public,  lay  as  well 
as  professional,  and  will  be  likely  to  exert  a 
favorable  influence  upon  the  reactionary  ten- 
dencies to  which  allusion  has  been  made. 
A.  B.  Poland, 
Superintendent  of  Schools, 

Newark,  N.  J. 


XV 


IV 


A  Brief  Notice  of  the  History  and  Phil- 
osophy of  the  Motor  Element  in  Education. 

The  demand  of  this  book  is  that  the  mo- 
tor element  in  training  be  made  fundamen- 
tal, consequently  that  the  sensory  element  be 
made  secondary.  The  motor  element  in 
general  represents  the  educative  influence  of 
action;  in  this  book  it  is  represented  by  the 
two  activities  of  manual  training  and  art. 
The  sensory  element  in  general  represents 
the  educative  influence  of  thought,  especially 
through  the  use  of  books. 

Historically  the  sensory  element  has  been 
primary  in  education  and  the  motor  element 
secondary.  The  Greeks  regarded  labor  as 
menial,  though  they  excelled  in  the  artistic 
self-expression  which  slave  labor  made  pos- 
sible. The  Romans  were  not  above  work 
but  they  lacked  in  artistic  self-expression. 
Thus  each  of  the  classical  nations  lacked  one 
of  two  elements  in  motor  training  herein  dis- 
cussed. Among  the  Greeks  the  life  of 
thought  dominated  the  life  of  action;  among 
the  Romans  the  life  of  action  dominated  the 
life  of  thought,  and  their  schools,  which 
xvi 


INTRODUCTION 

produced  the  orators  of  Rome,  reflected  this 
fact. 

The  mediaeval  curriculum  aimed  to  disci- 
pline mind  and  body  rather  than  to  develop 
them.  Labor  was  regarded  as  a  necessity, 
not  as  an  education;  it  consumed  time  that 
otherwise  might  be  misspent  in  idleness. 
The  sensory  element  of  impression  domin- 
ated the  motor  element  of  expression. 

The  Renaissance  revived  the  intellectual- 
ism  of  Greece,  and  the  whole  modern  cur- 
riculum until  twenty-five  years  ago  has  been 
dominantly  a  matter  of  knowledge  rather 
than  one  of  efficiency.  Luther  demanded 
handwork  to  accompany  headwork  without 
fully  appreciating  the  educational  significance 
of  his  demand.  Pestalozzi  in  his  long  life  of 
educational  experimentation  began  to  catch 
glimmers  of  the  educative  value  of  hand- 
work. Froebel  first  grasped  the  full  educa- 
tional significance  of  occupations  and  crea- 
tive self-expression.  Though  the  past. twen- 
ty-five years  have  seen  the  general  recogni- 
tion on  the  part  of  leaders  of  educational 
thought  and  of  the  most  advanced  school 
systems  of  the  truths  behind  the  demand  for 
motor  training,  on  the  practical  side  the  rev- 
olution of  the  curriculum  remains  yet  to  be 
xvii 


INTRODUCTION 

effected.  This  text  is  another  voice  calling 
for  the  revolution. 

On  the  philosophical  side  the  demand  for 
motor  in  distinction  from  sensory  training 
means  an  emphasis  on  the  will  in  distinc- 
tion from  the  intellect.  The  conflict  between 
the  claims  of  will  and  intellect  is  indicated  by 
the  terms  voluntarism  versus  intellectualism. 
To  the  voluntarist  the  will  is  the  essential 
characteristic  of  man,  to  the  intellectuallst 
man  is  essentially  a  thinking,  not  an  active, 
being.  In  educational  philosophy  Herbart 
made  the  pendulum  swing  in  the  direction  of 
intellectualism,  and  our  modern  school  meth- 
ods have  mainly  followed  him. 

But  the  rise  of  the  biological  sciences  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  have 
stressed  the  deep  place  of  instincts  in  life, 
especially  in  the  lives  of  children.  Reason 
appears  to  have  the  practical  function  of 
guiding  action  instead  of  the  intellectual 
function  of  pure  thought.  Schopenhauer  has 
especially  represented  the  primary  place  of 
will  and  the  secondary  place  of  intellect.  In 
educational  philosophy  Froebel  again  has 
represented  the  active  side  of  our  natures. 
The  remarkable  pragmatic  philosophy  of 
our  own  day  is  again  a  variant  form  of  vol- 
xviii 


INTRODUCTION 

untarism.  The  educational  philosophy  of 
the  next  generation  is  likely  to  be  voluntaris- 
tic  rather  than  intellectualistic.  And,  by  im- 
plication, it  is  the  voluntaristic  philosophy 
that  underlies  the  demands  of  this  book. 

In  sum,  the  history  and  philosophy  of  edu- 
cation are  ready  for  the  next  step  forward, 
viz,,  the  substitution  of  the  motor  for  the 
sensory  element  as  fundamental  in  training. 

H.    H.    HORNE, 

School  of  Pedagogy, 
New  York  University. 


XIX 


FOREWORD 

THIS  small  volume  is  a  companion 
to  my  book,  "The  Career  of  the 
Child  from  the  Kindergarten  to 
the  High  School,"  which  has  just 
appeared.  It  emphasizes  some  of  the  argu- 
ments presented  there,  and  endeavors  to 
prove  the  fundamental  value,  in  edu- 
cation, of  the  native  instincts  and  ten- 
dencies of  the  child.  While  laying 
particular  stress  upon  the  manual  and 
creative  side  of  educational  method,  and 
thus  connecting  more  particularly  with  chap- 
ters VI  (The  Manual  Principle)  and  vil 
(Kinds  of  Manual  Expression)  of  the  other 
book,  the  present  argument  goes  to  the  main 
springs  of  child  activity  and  interest,  and 
proposes  to  base  educational  science  upon  a 
foundation  of  psychogenetic  understanding 
of  the  child  soul,  which  in  turn  must  find  one 
of  its  sources  in  an  appreciation  of  those  phy- 
logenetic  facts  which  are  so  often  overlooked 
in  the  discussion  of  educational  problems. 

This  volume  also  adds  an  experimental 
justification  to  the  theory  of  developmental 
periods,  or  culture  epochs,  of  the  child  as 
offered  in  Chapter  v  of  "The  Career  of  the 


FOREWORD 

Child"  which  treats  of  a  rational  course  of 
study.  The  experiments  made  in  the  "Ethi- 
cal Culture  School"  of  New  York  were  later 
repeated  in  various  forms  by  the  author  in 
other  schools  of  this  country,  notably  the 
schools  of  Menomonee,  Wisconsin;  and 
everywhere  the  same  conditions  were  found 
to  be  existing,  thus  further  corroborating  the 
theory  advanced.  As  it  is  easy  to  make  simi- 
lar tests  anywhere,  following  the  same  sug- 
gestions, anyone  may  convince  himself  of  the 
truth  or  error  of  my  contentions.  Experi- 
mental work  of  this  kind,  in  other  words  the 
method  of  the  pedagogical  laboratory,  will 
elucidate  other  disputed  problems  of  child 
development  and  child  psychology,  and  we 
may  look  forward  to  the  time  when  peda- 
gogy will  in  reality  be  an  exact  science. 

The  experiments  related  in  this  volume 
were  made  over  a  decade  and  a  half  ago. 
And  the  manuscripts  of  my  book  on  "The 
Career  of  the  Child"  as  well  as  of  the  pres- 
ent one  were  written  ten  years  ago.  Some  of 
the  chapters  have  since  appeared  in  the  form 
of  articles  in  various  magazines;  and  all  of 
them  were  at  some  time  or  other  made  pub- 
lic in  the  form  of  lectures.  But  while  the 
original  manuscripts  were  of  course  revised 
before  they  were  presented  for  publication 


FOREWORD 

in  book  form,  little  or  nothing  of  the  original 
argument  appeared  to  need  change,  and  very 
little  new  material  had  to  be  added.  Altho 
it  is  but  natural  that  the  educational  world 
has  been  moving  ahead  since  the  idea  of  these 
books  was  first  conceived,  it  will  be  found 
that  the  educational  philosophy  here  ex- 
pressed is  still  distinctly  modern.  This  book 
may  at  least  serve,  on  the  one  hand,  as  a 
resume  of  previous  efforts  to  formulate  edu- 
cational principles;  and  on  the  other,  as  a 
starting  point  for  further  discussions. 

Maximilian  P.  E.  Groszmann, 
"Watchung  Crest", 

Plainfield,  N.  J.,  October,  191 1. 


CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction    .  .,.  .,.  .,.  .  .  . iii 

Foreword 5 

PART  ONE 

Manual  Culture  and  Sense  Training 

I— Knowledge  Never  Learnt  of  Schools  19 

2— Motor  and  Sense  Training 24 

3— The  Lesson  of  the  Centipede.  ....  38 

4 — Experience  vs.  Book  Learning.  ...  42 

5— The  Philosophy  of  the  Tool 46 

6— Not  a  New  Branch,  but  a  Method.  50 

PART  TWO 

Art  Culture  and  Art  Expression 

I— The  Esthetic  Attitude 59 

2— Expression  Thru  Art 62 

3 — An    Experiment,    and    Conclusions 

Therefrom   .  ., 78 

4— Interpretation  and  Symbolism  in  Art 

Expression 86 

5— Artistic  Culture  Epochs 93 

6— Suggestions  as  to  a  Course  in  Art 

Training    ..,...,.. 108 

Conclusion    . . ., 116 

9 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Figure 

I   &  2 — Moqui  Canteen,  New  Mexico 

3  &  4 — Clay  Figures 

5-7 — Clay  Figures 

8  &  9 — Free  Hand  Cuttings,  Grade  iii 

10 — Crayon  Drawing,  Grade  iii 

11-13 — Crayon  Drawings,  Grade  iv 

14-17 — Crayon  Drawings,  Grade  iv 

18 — Crayon  Drawing,  Grade  v 

19 — Crayon  Drawing,  Grade  vi 

20 — Crayon  Drawing,  Grade  vii 

21 — Crayon  Drawing,  Grade  viii 

22 — Egyptian  Drawing — A  Pond  with  Palms 

23 — Child's  Drawing — A  Pond  with  Trees 

24 — Shaman's  Lodge  (Alaska) 

25 — Child's  Drawing — A  Pond  with  Trees 

26 — Ojibwa  Medicine  Lodge 

27 — Child's  Drawing — A  Pond  with  Trees 

28 — Egyptian  Drawing — the  Brickmakers 

29 — Egyptian  Drawing — the  Coffinmakers 

30 — Child's  Drawing 

II 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Figure 

31  a  &  b — Shoemaker  and  Portrait 

31  c — Still  Life  Drawing 

32 — Clay  Modeling 

33-35 — Colored  Drawings  of  Indian  Vase 

36 — Priam's  Visit  to  Tent  of  Achilles 

37 — A  Winter  Scene 

38 — Clay  Modeling 


12 


SOME     FUNDAMENTAL     VERITIES 
IN  EDUCATION 

THE  education  of  our  children,  in 
the  schools  and  in  the  homes,  has 
in  a  large  measure  been  dictated 
by  the  prevailing  fashion  of 
thought.  The  result  has  not  always  been  to 
the  satisfaction  of  those  who  made  it  their 
business  to  adjust  the  natural  child  to  these 
varying  fashions.  Fashion  is  no  respecter  of 
healthy  bodies;  it  twists  and  distorts  them 
into  artificial  shapes,  and  ruins  their  health. 
Thus,  educational  fashions  are  apt  to  distort 
and  destroy  a  child's  natural  instincts  and 
produce  artificial  minds  and  misfits. 

Endeavoring  to  make  the  children  con- 
form to  preconceived  ideas  as  to  what  they 
ought  to  be,  we  have  often  forever  spoiled 
their  best  talents.  They  were  hedged  in  by 
so  many  OUGHTS,  and  trimmed  off  here 
and  there  to  make  them  suit  the  artificial  pat- 
tern that  their  natural  growth  became  seri- 
ously interfered  with.  We  insisted  that 
they  ought  to  act  in  certain  ways,  that  they 
ought  to  feel  fine  things  such  as  adults 
thought  were  right,  and  noble,  and  sublime. 
But  we  failed  to  inquire  into  what  the  children 
really  did  think  or  feel,  or  whether  they  were 

13 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

at  all  capable  of  feeling,  thinking,  and  act- 
ing as  we  expected  them  to  do. 

Unfortunately,  it  is  quite  easy  to  make 
young  children  conform  outwardly  to  our 
rules,  accept  our  standards  in  a  conventional 
way,  and  follow  blindly  our  suggestions.  But 
the  final  outcome  is  not  seldom  in  the  nature 
of  an  appalling  surprise  to  parents  and 
teachers.  And  then  there  are  lamentations 
and  astonishment:  Had  we  not  done  all  we 
could  for  the  boy  who  turns  out  to  be  way- 
ward? Had  we  not  given  him  the  very  best 
education  possible?  Probably,  we  had  not. 
The  real  nature  of  the  child  had  remained 
an  unknown  quantity  to  us  which  we  really 
had  not  cared  to  discover.  What  we  had 
been  educating  was  a  shadow— the  real 
self  of  the  child,  perchance,  we  did  not 
touch.  While  we  were  trying  to  mold 
the  child  after  the  best  approved  pat- 
tern, there  were  underground  forces  at  work 
which  slowly  gathered  strength,  often  from 
the  very  repression,  and  finally  blew  up  our 
artificial  structure  from  within,  leaving  ruin, 
and  desolation,  and  wailing. 

The  new  message  is :  Let  us  first  under- 
stand what  the  child  does  feel,  not  what  he 
ought  to  feel;  what  he  can  do,  not  what  we 
would  like  him  to  do;  and  then  we  may  ex- 
14 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

pect  to  be  able  to  make  him  a  man  in  the 
service  of  the  highest  ideals  of  the  race,  one 
who  is  first  of  all  himself,  and  true  to  him- 
self, not  a  copy  of  somebody  else,  not  mere- 
ly an  "average"  man,  after  the  common 
fashion:  but  an  individuality,  free,  strong, 
aspiring  to  the  noblest. 

^Our  traditional  education,  with  all  its 
modern  embellishments,  is  still  only  too  deep- 
ly concerned  in  repressing  the  natural  in- 
stincts of  children.  We  force  them  to  give 
up  their  paradise  of  dreams,  fancies  and 
play-activities,  their  glee  and  noise,  and  tie 
them  down,  at  a  tender  age,  to  school 
benches  and  desks,  and  slates  and  books, 
torturing  their  immature  brains  into  dull- 
ness. We  rejoice  when  our  artificial  drill 
succeeds  in  making  them  precocious,  and  im- 
itators of  adult  ways,  not  imagining  that  we 
have  perhaps  killed  the  divine  germ  of  spon- 
taneity and  individuality  in  its  very  infancy. 
We  praise  the  quiet,  sedate,  blase  child  who 
does  not  disturb  the  class  room  discipline  as 
a  laudable  product  of  successful  education, 
and  wreak  vengeance  on  the  sinner  who  bus- 
tles about  in  unrestrainable  boisterousness. 
And  we  ignore  the  fact  that  health  means 
vigor,  noise,  activity  with  a  child;  that  real, 

15 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

wholesome  self-control  can  only  come  with 
maturity,  and  that  the  quiet  child  is  generally 
an  abnormal  child,  physically,  mentally,  or 
morally. 

True,  intellectual  work,  as  ordinarily  un- 
derstood, is  a  form  of  activity  very  welcome 
to  most  children  at  certain  stages  of  their 
growth,  and  becoming  more  and  more  en- 
joyed by  them  as  their  minds  mature.  But 
at  no  stage,  during  the  age  of  childhood,  can 
it  form  the  exclusive  occupation,  or  the  prin- 
cipal, or  most  normal,  form  of  the  children's 
activity.  Even  the  most  studious  child,  if 
in  the  enjoyment  of  normal  health,  will  get 
weary  of  continuous  poring  over  books,  of 
memorizing,  writing,  and  figuring,  in  school 
and  in  the  dreary  hours  of  home  work 
which  curtails  his  rest  and  play;  and  in  cer- 
tain periods,  a  fit  of  aversion  to  study  will 
take  hold  of  every  one.  These  symptoms  of 
a  rather  healthy  development  we  are  only 
too  apt  to  denounce  as  due  to  moral  perver- 
sion, laziness,  naughtiness,  and  what  not. 
There  would  be  fewer  breakdowns,  less  of 
nervous  debility  and  irritable  temper,  less  in- 
efficiency and  failure  in  after-life,  if  childhood 
were  given  its  native  rights,  if  the  needs  of 
children  were  better  understood. 
16 


PART  I.     MANUAL  CULTURE  AND 
SENSE  TRAINING 


Knowledge  Never  Learnt  of  Schools 

ONE  of  the  foremost  characteris- 
tics of  healthy  child  hfe  is  the 
play  instinct  of  children.  A  play- 
ing child  is  a  happy  child;  a  child 
that  plays  with  absorbing  interest  is  normal 
and  in  satisfactory  condition.  Loss  of  the 
play  interest  is  a  danger  signal.  What  is 
presented  in  play  form  is  eagerly  taken  up 
and  commands  supreme  interest.  The  play- 
ing child  exercises  all  his  powers — never  gets 
tired  until  physically  exhausted;  he  is  inven- 
tive, original,  wonderful.  The  playing  child 
lives  in  a  world  by  himself,  glorious,  full  of 
beauty,  rich  in  possibilities;  nothing  is  im- 
possible. Thru  play  mainly  is  it  that  the 
true  natural  instincts  of  the  child  manifest 
themselves,  and  a  wealth  of  experience,  and 
the  power  to  do,  are  acquired. 

It  is  a  common  experience  among  princi- 
pals of  schools  that  parents  are  very  anxious 
to  have  their  children  leave  the  kindergarten 
and  be  advanced  to  the  school  classes  proper 
at  as  early  an  age  as  possible  so  that  they 
might  begin  to  "learn"  something.  Learn 
— what?  Some  figuring  on  slate  and  black- 
board, some  drawing  of  clumsy  letters,  some 
19 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

so-called  reading,  stutteringly  performed,  of 
brilliant  thoughts  such  as:  "I  see  a  cat. 
The  cat  can  run."  Is  that  learning?  True, 
it  leads  up  towards  an  avenue  of  learning 
which  is  more  or  less  useful  to  all,  and  par- 
ticularly so  to  some  who  are  gifted  in  that 
direction.  But  there  is  a  wealth  of  experi- 
ence and  education  to  be  gathered  outside 
of  this  narrow  path  of  ordinary  school  in- 
struction. Indeed,  it  has  been  urged,  on  the 
ground  of  a  more  accurate  knowledge  of  the 
child's  stages  of  mental  and  physiological 
development,  that  these  formal  branches 
should  properly  be  postponed  to  a  later  per- 
iod. The  child  is  learning  vastly  more  than 
the  superannuated  believer  in  the  gospel  of 
the  three  R's  has  begun  to  imagine,  by 
using  his  eyes  and  ears  and  hands  for 
a  boundless  variety  of  activities  other 
than  counting  up  two  and  three  is  five, 
or  reading,  "My  cat  sees  a  mouse",  or 
awkwardly  flourishing  a  capital  C.  A 
sorry  child  that  knows  and  learns  no 
more  than  that.  As  Professor  Preyer  has 
said:  "A  child  in  the  first  three  or  four 
years  of  his  life  learns  as  much  as  the  stu- 
dent in  his  entire  university  course."  Well 
may  Whittier's  "Barefoot  Boy"  be  quoted 
20 


Knowledge  Never  Learnt  of  Schools 

who  gains — 

"Knowledge  never  learnt  of  schools, 
Of  the  wild  bee's  morning  chase, 
Of  the  wild  flower's  time  and  place, 
Flight  of  fowl  and  habitude 
Of  the  tenants  of  the  wood; 
How  the  tortoise  bears  his  shell, 
How  the  woodchuck  digs  his  cell; 
And  the  groundmole  sinks  his  well; 
How  the  robin  feeds  her  young. 
How  the  oriole's  nest  is  hung; 
Where  the  whitest  lilies  blow. 
Where  the  freshest  berries  grow, 
Where  the  groundnut  trails  its  vine. 
Where    the    woodgrape's    clusters    shine; 
Of  the  black  wasp's  cunning  way, — 
Mason  of  his  walls  of  clay, — 
And  the  architectural  plans 
Of  gray  hornet  artisans! 
For,  eschewing  books  and  tasks. 
Nature  answers  all  he  asks; 
Hand  in  hand  with  her  he  walks, 
Face  to  face  with  her  he  talks. 
Part  and  parcel  of  her  joy, — 
Blessings  on  the  barefoot  boy! 

He         3|c  :(:         3ic         ](:  ]|c 

He   learns   all   this   multitude   of  lessons 

21 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

practically  without  a  teacher,  unless  it  were 
his  father  or  mother  teaching  him  a  commun- 
ity with  nature  on  those  precious  walks  into 
the  open  which  now-a-days,  alas !  are  becom- 
ing a  thing  of  the  past,— the  bustle  and  noise 
of  the  big  cities  swallowing  up  all  this  sweet- 
ness of  bygone  times.  He  learns  them  quite 
spontaneously  and  joyously,  thru  his  play, 
thru  his  natural  activity  which  develops  his 
muscles,  his  nerves,  his  senses,  his  brain. 
And  he  learns  them  so  easily  because  they  are 
a  matter  of  supreme  interest  to  him,  not 
made  a  sorry  task  by  a  grumbling,  critical 
schoolmaster.  To  tell  the  truth,  I  have  little 
faith  in  the  old  Puritanical  idea  that  there 
is  virtue  in  drudgery,  and  that  we  can 
strengthen  our  moral  nature  materially  by 
doing  what  is  distasteful  to  us.  We  shall  do 
our  best  only  when  our  whole  soul  is  in  the 
work;  and  that  can  only  be  when  we  are 
supremely  interested,  when  a  motive  behind 
the  act  spurs  us  on,  when  we  can  be  our- 
selves in  expression  and  activity. 

Play  is  the  child's  work.  What  is  the  dif- 
ference between  play  and  work  as  the  latter 
is  ordinarily  conceived?  "Compel  a  boy  to 
continue  quietly  his  game  of  marbles  after 
an  alarm  of  fire  has  sounded  in  his  neighbor- 

22 


Knowledge  Never  Learnt  of  Schools 

hood,    and    play    has    changed    to    labor." 
(Johnson). 

It  may  be  claimed,  by  way  of  a  broad 
statement,  that  all  that  is  great  in  the  world 
has  been  done  not  by  labor  that  was  drudg- 
ery, but  by  efforts  which  correspond  to  the 
play  instinct,  that  is  to  say  such  as  were  made 
spontaneously,  out  of  the  fulness  of  the 
heart,  as  an  outcome  of  natural  instincts, 
powers,  or  talents.  Man  is  wholly  man, 
says  Schiller,  only  when  he  plays. 

And  what  a  world  of  information,  inspir- 
ation, and  training  is  there  thru  play!  Yoder, 
in  an  older  study  (Pedagogical  Seminary  III) 
says:  "In  the  making  of  mud  pies  and  doll 
dresses,  sandpile  farms  and  miniature  roads, 
tiny  dams,  and  water  wheels,  whittled  out 
boats,  sleds,  dog  harnesses,  and  a  thousand 
and  one  other  things,  the  child  receives  an  ac- 
cumulation of  facts,  a  skill  of  hands,  a  true- 
ness  of  eye,  a  power  of  attention  and  quick- 
ness of  perception;  and  in  flying  kite,  catch- 
ing trout,  in  pressing  leaves  and  gathering 
stones,  in  collecting  stamps,  and  eggs,  and 
butterflies,  a  culture  also,  seldom  appre- 
ciated by  the  parent  and  teacher." 


23 


II 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

Do  not  repress  the  play  instinct  in  the 
child,  but  recognize  it  in  his  school  work! 
What  is  called  manual  training  is  but  one 
form  of  this  recognition.  It  means  culture 
thru  manual  training,  thru  sense  training, 
thru  the  play  instinct.  For  true  manual  cul- 
ture in  the  elementary  school  is  directed 
play,  as  are  the  kindergarten  occupations 
and  games.  Directed: — not  in  the  sense  of 
crushing  out  the  child's  spontaneity  and  in- 
ventiveness, but  of  following  Nature's  lead 
by  providing  for  the  child,  in  a  more  or  less 
systematic  and  organized  way,  what  he 
craves  for,  and  what  will  respond  to  his  in- 
nermost needs. 

Manual  training  is  in  reality  sense  train- 
ing. The  senses  are  the  gates  thru  which 
the  knowledge  of  the  world  around  us  comes 
to  us;  but  the  gates  only.  The  mind  receives 
messages  from  the  senses  in  the  brain. 
There  it  is  where  impressions  take  place, 
where  concepts  are  formed.  We  do  not  see 
with  our  eyes,  but  with  the  brain;  we  do  not 
feel  with  our  hands,  but  with  our  brain. 
Light,  sound,  hardness,  etc.,  exist  not  in 
reality,  but  are  the  forms  under  which  the 
24 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

brain  perceives  the  world  and  its  messagesA 
Cut  the  nerve  that  connects  the  eye  with  the  \ 
centre  of  vision  in  the  brain — ever  so  per- 
fect and  unimpaired  as  the  eye  may  remain, 
there  will  be  no  perception  of  light.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  have  learnt  very  gradually 
to  understand  the  meaning  of  the  messages 
which  the  natural  forces  are  sending  con- 
stantly thru  the  senses;  learning  to  locate 
and  interpret  the  causes  of  sensation,  is  a 
laborious  task.  Thus,  sense  training  is  brain 
training;  thru  sense  training,  we  are  enabled 
to  have  clearer  and  more  accurate  percep- 
tions and  concepts. 

The  new-born  babe  has  not  this  know- 
ledge; yet  few  of  us  can  fully  appreciate 
that  the  conceptions  which  constitute  the 
adult's  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  which 
seem  so  simple  and  self-evident,  were  of 
such  slow  growth.  A  few  illustrations  may 
serve  to  emphasize  the  character  of  this 
conceptual  development. 

If  we  move  a  pencil  point  along  the 
groove  between  two  fingers  so  that  it  touches 
both  at  the  same  time,  we  are  distinctly 
aware  of  the  presence  of  only  one  point, 
even  tho  we  close  our  eyes.  But  not  so  when 
we  cross  the  fingers  over.     If  we  now  touch 

25 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

them  with  the  pencil,  we  feel  two  points, 
and  even  the  assistance  of  vision  which  in- 
forms us  that  there  is  but  one,  will  not  dis- 
pel the  illusion.  What  is  the  cause  of  this 
peculiar  phenomenon?  Experience  has 
taught  us  that  one  and  the  same  point  can 
touch  two  adjacent  fingers  in  normal  posi- 
tion, but  that  the  two  remote  sides  of  these 
same  fingers  cannot  be  reached  by  less  than 
two  points  at  a  time.  Crossing  the  fingers 
is  uncommon  because  unnecessary  for  ordin- 
ary functions;  and  consequently  there  is  no 
experience  recorded  in  the  brain  of  single 
points  touching  them  in  this  position.  We 
have  learned  to  interpret  sensations  report- 
ed from  the  adjacent  sides  of  two  fingers  as 
coming  from  one  object,  and  those  reported 
from  the  remote  sides  as  coming  from  more 
than  one.  This  interpretation  has  become 
automatic  and  instantaneous,  and  can  now  no 
longer  be  corrected  by  the  messages  sent 
from  other  senses. 

Another  experiment  has  been  described  in 
various  forms  by  different  psychologists.  If 
we  lift  up  with  our  hands  two  bodies  which 
are  equal  in  weight,  but  different  in  size,  the 
material  being  apparently  the  same,  the 
smaller  one  feels  distinctly  the  heavier.  This 
26 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

illusion  lasts  even  after  we  have  convinced 
our  intellect,  by  actual  weighing,  that  the 
two  bodies  are  equipollent.  In  an  experi- 
ment with  a  series  of  eight  such  weights,  even 
persons  who  were  well  used  to  discriminate 
between  small  weights,  were  carried  away 
by  the  illusion,  and  gave  widely  different  an- 
swers as  to  the  comparative  weights  of  the 
objects.  Some  thought  they  discovered  just 
"a  trifling  difference";  others  estimated  the 
smallest  weight  to  be  as  much  as  eight  times 
as  heavy  as  the  largest! 

The  explanation  is  again  that  we  have  be- 
come accustomed  to  an  interpretation  of  the 
messages  which  we  receive,  this  time  by  the 
muscular  sense,  as  in  the  first  experiment  it 
was  the  sense  of  touch,  so  that  it  corresponds 
to  our  ordinary  and  oft  repeated  experi- 
ence. The  larger  a  body,  the  heavier  it  usu- 
ally is,  especially  when  compared  with  other 
bodies  made  of  the  same  material.  Auto- 
matically, then,  we  will  expend  a  greater 
muscular  effort  in  lifting  the  larger  body 
than  in  moving,  or  weighing,  the  smaller; 
experiencing  then  less  resistance  from  the 
larger  body  than  we  expect,  the  illusion  of 
its  being  lighter  will  be  produced.  For  we 
measure  weight  by  the  resistance  a  body  of- 
27 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

fers  to  our  muscular  effort  in  lifting.  The 
motor  response  to  the  sensory  impression, 
as  mediated  by  the  sense  of  sight  in  this  in- 
stance, is  practically  reflex  and  unescapable. 
It  is  noteworthy,  however,  to  remember  that 
the  illusion  fails  in  the  case  of  children 
younger  than  six,  and  of  imbeciles.  Young 
children  lack  the  association  of  sensations 
and  ideas  which  characterizes  true  concep- 
tion; the  individual  senses  develop  independ- 
ently of  each  other,  each  producing  a  separ- 
ate set  of  impressions  which  by  numberless 
repetitions  under  varying  conditions  become 
gradually  related  and  co-ordinated.  In  im- 
beciles, there  is  a  general  weakness  of  as- 
sociative power,  and  their  sensations  remain 
essentially  unrelated.  The  illusions  here  de- 
scribed are  impossible  without  a  correlation 
of  sense-experiences;  therefore,  they  are 
possible  only  in  those  who  have  reached  the 
associative  stage. 

They  are  illusions  of  sensation  only,  and 
of  what  may  be  called  automatic  judgment. 
They  can  be  corrected,  as  far  as  abstract 
knowledge  is  concerned,  by  other  sense  tests. 
But  to  make  these  corrective  tests,  requires 
not  only  an  extra  effort,  but  presupposes  a 
consciousness  of  the  possibility  of  error. 
28 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

This  consciousness  is  again  the  result  of  ex- 
perience; it  cannot  be  expected  to  exist  in 
the  young  child,  or  the  untrained  mind.  As 
we  are  subject  to  numberless  illusions  of  sim- 
ilar character,  in  the  entire  sphere  of  sensa- 
tions, the  question  may  arise  whether  they 
might  not  be  avoided,  at  least  in  part,  by  ap- 
propriate training  in  early  childhood  when 
our  first  concepts  are  being  formed. 

However  that  may  be,  this  fact  will  have 
become  clear  from  the  foregoing  discussion 
that  the  child  learns  to  interpret  the  mes- 
sages it  receives  thru  the  senses  just  as  the 
telegraph  operator  learns  to  interpret  the 
meaning  of  the  clicking  of  his  apparatus. 
And  so  we  have  come  to  call  the  messages 
sent  thru  the  ear,  sounds;  those  sent  thru 
the  eye,  light;  those  sent  thru  the  sense  of 
touch,  hardness  or  softness,  etc. ;  and  then 
there  are  messages  from  the  other  senses, 
those  of  smell  and  taste,  the  muscular  sense, 
the  temperature  sense,  and  perhaps  other 
senses  as  yet  undefined.  As  a  rule,  as  said  be- 
fore, it  requires  the  co-operation  of  several 
senses  to  give  us  the  information  needed  for 
tolerably  clear  images  of  external  objects. 
While  these  images  may  after  all  be  but  sym- 
bols of  reality  they  represent  the  reactions  of 
29 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

our  mind  to  external  stimuli,  and  therefore 
answer  the  purpose  of  cognition. 

Indeed,  we  are  constantly  at  work — and 
this  is  what  constitutes  our  mental  activity 
— to  correct  and  clarify  our  mental  images 
and  to  increase  our  conceptional  possessions : 
an  activity  which  renders  our  world-idea 
grander,  deeper,  nobler,  hour  after  hour. 
But  there  is  a  limit  to  this  growth.  Not 
alone  that  our  senses  will  never  suffice  to  re- 
veal all  the  mysteries  of  nature  as  thru  them 
we  can  only  perceive  that  fraction  of  the  uni- 
versal forces  which  finds  them  ready  chan- 
nels, or  competent  messengers;— but  the 
mind  has  a  conventional  way  of  interpreting 
sense  messages  in  the  manner  they  first  im- 
pressed it,  and  which  has  become  fixed  and 
automatic,  something  like  a  mere  reflex  ac- 
tivity. Thus,  remembering  the  finger  and 
pencil  experiment,  we  shall  possibly  never  be 
able  to  rid  ourselves  of  the  sensation  of  two 
pencil  points  when  there  is  only  one.  And 
then,  each  nerve  can  convey  messages  only 
in  its  own  individual  way,  that  is  to  say,  it 
can  only  report  a  shock  which  it  receives  and 
which  is  then  interpreted  by  the  mind  in  an 
habitual,  fixed  method.  Everyone  knows 
about  the  unpleasant  experience  of  "seeing 
30 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

stars"  when  there  are  none  to  be  seen,  and 
which  happens  when  we  receive  a  shock  on 
our  eye  which  also  affects  the  optic  nerve. 
The  explanation  of  the  sensation  is  that  the 
irritation  of  the  optic  nerve  is  reported  to 
headquarters  and  there  deciphered  in  the 
usual  way,  as  coming  from  the  ordinary 
source  of  optic  impressions,  viz.,  rays  of 
light.  The  report  could  not  be  deciphered 
or  interpreted  in  any  other  way.  Thus  we 
have  the  illusion  of  light  even  when  the  shock 
was  produced  by  other  means,  a  mechanical 
pressure,  or  an  electric  current,  or  what 
not. 

All  this  implies  that  we  are  apt  to  misin- 
terpret messages,  to  be  deceived  abcit  the 
objects  our  senses  perceive,  in  more  tl  an  one 
way.  This  again  suggests  that  great  care 
must  be  taken  so  that  the  earliest  impressions 
a  child  receives  be  as  clear  and  accurate,  and 
mutually  supplementary,  as  the  educator's 
forethought  can  make  them,  lest  the  child 
carry  thru  life  a  veritable  burden  of  errone- 
ous conceptions  and  modes  of  interpretation 
which  he  can  never  shake  off.  The  child 
must  learn  to  test  his  sensations  as  mediated 
by  one  sense  organ  constantly  by  those  of 
the  others,  in  order  to  arrive  at  reliable  re- 

31 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

suits.  His  power  of  observation  must  be 
stimulated,  so  that  he  will  learn  to  know  ex- 
actly, to  think  clearly  and  independently. 
Here  is  seen  the  vast  scope  of  sense  training 
without  which  all  formal  instruction  in  read- 
ing, writing,  number,  in  history  and  geo- 
graphy, in  whatever  you  please,  will  remain 
empty  and  meaningless,  mere  "sounding 
brass  and  tinkling  cymbal." 

Manual  training  is  sense  training.  It  is 
training  of  the  hand,  as  the  word  signifies, 
which  in  itself  is  a  training  in  muscular  adjust- 
ment, or  motor  training;  but  also  of  the  hand 
as  guided  by  the  eye  and  inspired  and  directed 
by  the  mind.  And  were  it  but  a  training  of 
the  sense  of  touch,  and  of  the  muscular  sense, 
it  were  much  indeed.  The  sense  of  touch, 
assisted  by  the  motor  sense,  is  the  most  an- 
cient and  effective  of  all.  The  wonderful  ac- 
complishments of  children  born  blind  and 
deaf  and  mute,  when  they  were  placed  under 
careful  training, — such  as  Laura  Bridgman 
and  Helen  Keller — have  been  made  possible 
by  the  sense  of  touch.  Primitive  organisms 
have  only  this  one  sense  from  which  all 
other  senses  have  been  differentiated.  Even 
now,  touch  stimuli  have  many  powerful  ef- 
fects, also  in  the  province  of  emotional  life. 

32 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

It  is  thru  tactile  and  muscular  tests,  in  arm 
and  hand  and  leg  movements,  that  we  have 
conceptions  of  space,  and  of  form  in  space.  It 
was  once  thought  that  the  eye  can  at  least  lo- 
cate the  direction  from  which  a  ray  of  light 
comes  as  a  messenger  of  knowledge;  but  it 
has  been  shown*  that  even  in  this  fundamen- 
tal function  the  sense  of  touch  must  in  all 
probability  come  to  the  aid  of  the  mind.  The 
eye  perceives  nothing  but  light,  or  color,  or 
their  absence,  and  degree.  Light  and  color 
impressions  are  quite  deceptive  and  often 
call  forth  very  erroneous  notions  of  an  ob- 
ject. The  tricks  of  legerdemain  and  the  ef- 
fect of  panoramas  and  cycloramas  were  im- 
possible without  this  fact.  The  size  and 
shape  of  bodies,  the  distance  of  objects,  the 
nature  and  structure  of  the  material  com- 
posing them,  would  remain  much  more  a 
mystery  to  us  than  they  are,  were  it  not  for 
the  tactile  and  muscular  sensations.  Unless 
we  have  once  handled  a  ball,  or  a  cube,  we 
shall  never  really  know  what  these  things 
mean.  The  eye  mediates  to  us  only  two  di- 
mensions, on  the  flat  surface.  No  drawing 
can  give  the  immediate  impression  of  solid- 


*Cf.  Am.  Journal  of  Psychology,  Oct.,  1897,  '^   ~^ 

33 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

ity;  not  even  the  cleverest  painting  in  color 
does.  True,  owing  to  the  convergence  of 
the  axes  of  our  two  eyes,  we  look  somewhat 
around  an  object  and  thus  get  a  faint  indica- 
tion of  solidity;  a  fact  made  use  of  in  stereo- 
scopic pictures.  But  it  has  also  been  conclu- 
sively proven  that  the  eye  can  be  deceived  in 
spite  of  this ;  that  it  depends  upon  touch  and 
muscular  tests  to  perfect  the  idea  of  three- 
dimensional  space.  That  we  now  can  rec- 
ognize, with  the  eye  alone,  an  object  to  be 
solid,  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  we  have 
learnt  to  interpret  certain  light  and  color  ef- 
fects as  indicative  of  certain  conditions  of 
size,  shape  and  distance,  which  were  origin- 
ally revealed  to  us  by  handling  objects  of 
such  size  and  shape,  or  by  measuring  the  dis- 
tances by  reaching  out  for  the  objects,  or 
walking  up  to  them;  and  to  the  further  fact 
that  we  have  forgotten  the  many  sense  tests, 
often  made  quite  unconsciously,  thru  which 
we  have  gathered  our  experience,  slowly, 
gradually,  laboriously,  when  we  were  chil- 
dren. Similar  associations  enable  us  to  ap- 
preciate the  meaning  of  paintings  in  which 
these  same  light  and  color  effects  are  skill- 
fully imitated. 

From  the  first  efforts  of  the  crowing  babe 
34 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

in  his  crib  to  discover  the  nature  of  the 
queer  shining  specks  dancing  before  his  eyes, 
and  which  he  finally  learns  to  locate  and  rec- 
ognize, by  playing  with  them,  by  feeling  pain 
in  them,  and  in  numberless  other  ways,  as 
parts  of  his  own  body,  his  own  dear,  plump 
little  legs — from  these  baby  experiments  to 
those  of  the  scientist  who  weighs  our  globe 
and  measures  the  distance  of  stars,  there  is 
indeed  a  long  journey,  but  the  process  is  the 
same. 

The  value  of  sense  training,  even  in  in- 
fancy, is  thus  clearly  shown.  Frobel  recog- 
nized this  need,  and  his  *'Mutter-und  Kose- 
lieder"  have  been  invented  for  the  very  pur- 
pose of  enabling  the  rriother  to  assist  her  babe 
in  the  mastering  and  control  of  this  wealth 
of  sense-impressions  rushing  at  him  from  all 
sides.  And  in  the  kindergarten  practice,  the 
need  of  sense  training  is  admitted  and  min- 
istered to,  in  a  more  or  less  thoro  manner. 
But  the  recognition  of  this  need  which  is 
verily  paramount,  must  be  continued  thruout 
the  school,  up  to  the  highest  classes. 

The  intellectual  value  of  motor  activity  is 
so  high  that  its  repression  is  fraught  with 
danger  in  regard  to  a  healthful  manifesta- 
tion of  the  mind.     "Motor  centres  make  up 

35 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

about  1-3  of  the  brain.  ...  By  motor 
training,  brain  growth  and  mental  activity 
are  increased  and  new  avenues  are  opened 
leading  to  a  more  intimate  acquaintance  with 
the  world."*  If  we  remember  that  the  sense 
of  touch,  combined  with  the  muscular  sense,  is 
the  most  primitive  one  from  which  all  others 
have  gradually  evolved,  it  will  at  once  be 
clear  that  the  touch  and  motor  centers  which 
control  this  province  of  sensations,  are  the 
very  first  to  develop  in  the  brain,  and  that 
they  must  be  helped  in  their  development  by 
use  and  practice.  The  other  centres,  the 
other  portions  of  the  brain  develop  at  later 
periods.  But  "if  the  centre  is  forced  before 
its  time,  disorders  of  muscle  and  nerve  con- 
trol result"  (Hancock,  1.  c. ).  Knowing  this, 
we  need  not  be  surprised  why  children  whose 
later  and  higher  brain  centres  are  stimulated 
artificially  and  prematurely,  are  apt  to  be- 
come nervous  and  abnormal.  The  percent- 
age of  pupils  in  which  nervous  disorders  are 
produced  by  the  prevailing  irrational  meth- 
ods and  standards  of  education  is  appalling- 
ly high.  And  let  us  not  deceive  ourselves  by 
believing   that   we   gain   time   by   making   a 


*Hancock,  Pedagogical  Seminary,  Oct.,  1894. 

36 


Motor  and  Sense  Training 

child  learn  at  the  earliest  possible  moment 
what  ought  to  be  postponed  to  a  later  per- 
iod, when  his  brain  is  prepared  and  mature 
enough  for  the  work.  All  the  seeming  bril- 
liancy of  his  tender  age  will  not  prevent  him 
from  becoming  really  weakened  and  retarded 
in  his  growth;  he  may  never  really  mature. 
Child  prodigies  rarely  continue  to  develop 
after  attaining  adult  age.  An  English  critic 
has  justly  accused  the  ordinary  methods  by 
which  an  artificial  stimulation  is  effected,  of 
producing  stupidity  rather  than  intelligence, 
dullness  rather  than  alertness,  degeneration 
rather  than  progress. 


37 

X  3  6  i  8  3 


Ill 

The  Lesson  of  the  Centipede 

Children  of  young  years  are  not  capable 
of  abstract,  logical  work;  the  ability  to  rea- 
son is  a  late  and  slow  growth.  They  learn 
by  objective,  not  by  abstract  means;  by  mus- 
cular, not  by  intellectual  observation.  They 
absorb  more  than  they  abstract;  they  per- 
ceive more  than  they  can  reason  out;  they 
can  do  more  than  they  can  argue  about  and 
tell.  Theirs  is  an  instinctive  activity,  not 
a  reflective.  Beware  of  making  the  child  re- 
flective and  self-conscious  before  his  time ! 
His  fate  may  be  that  of  the  Centipede  of 
whom  the  poet  sings : 

"The  Centipede  was  happy  quite, 
Until  the  toad  in  fun 

Said :    'Pray,  which  leg  comes  after  which  ?' 
Which  worked  her  mind  to  such  a  pitch, 
She  lay  distracted  in  the  ditch. 
Considering  how  to  run." 

As  Channing  puts  it:  "The  best  chance 
of  all  is  not  to  be  hurried;  for  the  bright 
ones  will  learn  all  the  better  in  late  years 
for  prolonged,  early  physical  training,  and 
the  defective  ones  will  only  tend  to  develop 
their  inherent  weaknesses  without  it." 
38 


The  Lesson  of  the  Centipede 

This  demand  does  not  imply  that  the  chil- 
dren must  be  left  idly  to  themselves;  cer- 
tainly not.  An  idle  child  is  never  a  normal 
child.  There  must  be  full  activity,  concen- 
tration of  attention,  training  in  the  making 
of  strenuous  effort  by  arousing  native  and 
intense  interest.  This  interest  may  not  al- 
ways assert  itself  spontaneously,  but,  lying 
dormant  on  account  of  an  unsympathetic  or 
otherwise  unfavorable  environment,  may 
need  an  awakening.  The  child  needs  exercise, 
healthful  physical  exercise,  which  will  help 
our  children  to  unfold  their  native  strength 
to  the  highest  pitch. 

This  plea  for  the  recognition  of  the  natural 
instincts  of  children,  of  their  need  for  motor 
activity,  refers  not  only  to  very  young  chil- 
dren. There  are  several  other  periods  in  a 
child's  life  when  the  motor  forces  should 
have  the  preference.  Young  girls  as  well  as 
boys  in  the  pubescent  period  should  have 
much  more  physical  training  and  much  less 
mental  overstraining  than  they  have  now, 
when  just  at  this  critical  age  they  are  ex- 
pected to  graduate  with  all  honors  from 
schools  and  academies. 

I  quote  from  an  instructive  article  in  the 
"Child  Study  Monthly"  (November  1897), 
39 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

treating  of  this  same  period:  "Too  many 
studies  are  imposed  or  permitted.  Too 
much  time  is  spent  indoors.  The  recess,  in- 
stead of  being  a  time  for  real  health-giving 
physical  romps  and  exercise,  is  devoted  to 
crocheting,  making  hemstitched,  feather- 
edge  or  herring-bone  trimming.  The  pomp 
and  parade  of  public  exercises,  especially 
commencement,  the  pressure  and  excitement 
induced  by  working  for  marks  and  cram- 
ming for  examinations,  are  not  entirely  the 
fault  of  the  school,  but  rather  the  fault  of 
the  parents  who  demand  that  their  own 
daughters  be  conspicuous  above  their  mates 
in  school.  These  girls  love  to  please  their 
blindly  ambitious  parents  and  spur  their 
overworked  bodies  beyond  the  point  of  re- 
covery from  fatigue,  at  too  great  expense 
of  real  energy  and  nerve  force.  When  will 
parents  learn  that  a  whole  ton  of  knowledge 
gained  at  the  expense  of  a  single  ounce  of 
health  is  far  too  dearly  paid  for?" 
"TOO  MUCH  BRAIN  WORK  AND 
TOO  LITTLE  BODY  WORK  IS  THE 
EVIL  OF  OUR  SCHOOLS." 

The  brain  work  referred  to  here  is   of 
course  the  one-sided  stimulation  and  prema- 
ture forcing   of  the  higher  centres;    brain 
40 


The  Lesson  of  the  Centipede 

training  thru  rational  sense  training  and  mo- 
tor activity  will  re-establish  the  balance  in 
these  critical  periods. 

The  motor  element  must  be  recognized 
thruout  the  school  course.  The  present 
standard  of  education  is  altogether  false. 
We  must  learn  to  recognize  fully  the  new 
principle  of  Learning  by  Doing  which  is 
based  upon  an  appreciation  of  the  natural 
instincts,  not  only  of  childhood,  but  of  the 
human  race. 


41 


IV 


Experience  vs.  Book  Learning 

A  certain  class  of  so-called  educated  per- 
sons imagine  themselves  very  superior  beings 
if  they  can  recite  from  memory  an  algebraic 
formula,  or  know  how  to  spell  "paral- 
lelepipedon",  or  can  call  a  sparrow  by  its 
Latin  or  French  name.  To  possess  such 
knowledge  is  perhaps  an  enviable  thing;  yet 
any  ordinary  carpenter  may  throw  such  a 
fine  person  into  the  utmost  confusion  by  ask- 
ing him  questions  upon  very  simple  proper- 
ties of  matter  and  very  common  operations, 
even  tho  he  may  not  be  able  to  spell  his 
name.  We  need  not  undervalue  literary 
education,  and  may  deplore  the  illiteracy  of 
a  still  too  large  percentage  of  our  people  as 
a  great  evil;  and  yet  believe  that  ordinary 
school  branches  are  not  all  there  is  of  educa- 
tion. A  great  deal  of  training  can  be  de- 
rived from  the  common  pursuits  of  life,  from 
the  practice  of  the  arts  and  trades — really  a 
mine  of  intellectual  wealth  of  which  many 
have  very  scant  appreciation.  A  "common" 
man,  if  he  is  otherwise  effective  in  his  pro- 
fession, may  shame  a  philosopher  in  intel- 
ligence and  "common  sense",  if  the  latter  be 
42 


Experience  vs.  Book  Learning 

a  mere  theorist,  with  little  knowledge  of  the 
world  of  reality. 

Learning  from  books  about  the  tendency 
of  water  to  seek  the  lowest  level  is  certainly 
less  effectual  than  to  lay  out  and  build  an 
actual  dam  and  canal  for  irrigation.  And  a 
theoretical  knowledge  of  architecture  is 
surely  of  less  value  than  the  practical  ability 
to  construct  a  Brooklyn  Bridge  or  a  Cologne 
Cathedral.  Let  us  not  confuse  formal  and 
conceptual  education;  and  while  we  should 
give  formal  training  its  due  place,  and  be  in- 
spired by  the  lofty  thoughts  of  the  thinker 
and  admire  the  works  of  the  poet, 
of  the  historian,  or  the  grammarian —  :  let 
us  not  forget  the  greatness  of  the 
DOERS,  the  creators  among  us  whose  works 
the  others  talk  and  write  about,  even  tho 
these  doers  be  poor  spellers  and  unreliable 
geographers.  An  ingenious  machine  that 
seems  almost  endowed  with  human  under- 
standing; a  towering  dome  giving  grandeur 
and  character  to  an  entire  landscape;  a  mys- 
terious tunnel,  hewn  thru  massive  mountains 
and  connecting  two  nations ;  or  even  the  tiny 
shoe  of  a  maiden  if  it  fits  the  dainty  foot  with- 
out constraining  the  natural  movement,  are 
as  much  proofs  of  the  ingenuity  of  the  hu- 
43 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

man  mind,  as  much  triumphs  of  human  crea- 
tiveness  over  the  brute  forces  of  the  uni- 
verse, as  much  evidence  of  the  nobiHty  and 
divineness  of  human  nature,  as  is  the  sweet- 
est song  of  a  Tennyson,  or  the  most  power- 
ful drama  of  a  Shakespeare.  And  altho  the 
best  work  can  be  done  only  by  the  best 
trained  man,  by  him  who  is  a  representative 
of  the  civilization  of  his  time  at  its  fullest,  it 
must  be  remembered  that  some  of  the  most 
immortal  creations  of  the  constructive  mind 
have  been  produced  by  persons  who  were 
deficient  in  formal  knowledge,  in  reading 
and  writing  and  such  things,  from  the  per- 
iod of  antiquity  to  our  own  era.  All  these 
activities  are  different  expressions  of  ideas, 
more  or  less  lofty  and  comprehensive,  but 
yet  borne  up  by  aspiration  towards  perfec- 
tion. And  while  an  even  balance  of  all  these 
different  powers  may  make  the  ideal  man, 
this  glory  is  only  for  the  greatest  genius  such 
as  may  bless  the  earth  from  time  to  time.  We 
humbler  mortals  have  each  our  special  little 
gift  or  talent  thru  which  we  can  render  our 
mite  of  service.  Let  us  give  each  child  a 
chance  to  be  himself,  to  work  out  his  own 
destiny,  to  express  the  ideas  and  ideals  he 
cherishes  as  best  he  can,  in  his  own  way,  be  it 
44 


Experience  vs.  Book  Learning 

by  planting  trees,  or  by  fitting  machinery,  or 
by  writing  articles  for  the  daily  press.  And 
it  is  the  doing  of  things  which  is  ever  the 
foundation  of  the  thinking  of  thoughts ;  and 
the  thinking  of  thoughts  is  vain  unless  it  in- 
spires the  doing  of  things. 


45 


The  Philosophy  of  the  Tool 

Man's  most  faithful  servant  is  his  hand,  and 
the  hand's  complement  is  the  tool.  "Tools", 
says  Dr.  Paul  Carus  in  his  interesting  mono- 
graph, "The  Philosophy  of  the  Tool",  "ex- 
tend the  sphere  of  our  existence.  Ham- 
mers, spades,  axes,  are  prolongations  of  our 
hands;  the  dairy,  the  bakery,  the  kitchen,  are 
as  it  were  appendices  to  our  digestive  or- 
gans, to  the  teeth  and  the  stomach;  engines 
and  railroads  are  wings  to  our  feet;  and 
machinery  of  all  descriptions  are  tools  that 
have  become  independent,  but  still  remain 
our  faithful  servants.  Their  work  increases 
our  powers  and  widens  our  dominion  in  na- 
ture. Every  invention  and  perfection  of 
tools  represents  a  growth  of  power. 
Man's  reason  has  been  developed  by  work- 
ing with  tools,  but  the  possibility  of  tools  de- 
pends in  its  turn  upon  man's  ability  to  han- 
dle tools.  .  .  .  The  development  of 
reason  depends  so  much  upon  the  proper  me- 
chanical employment  of  our  hands,  that  we 
even  to-day  use  the  words  "to  grasp",  "to 
comprehend",  "to  conceive"*  as  expressions 


*Cf.  the  German  "begreifen".     G. 
46 


The  Philosophy  of  the  Tool 

denoting  the  most  important  act  of  a  ra- 
tional cognition.  .  .  .  The  history  of 
tools,  and  of  their  invention,  is  the  history  of 
the  growth  of  the  human  mind." 

If  history  were  taught  in  our  schools  from 
the  viewpoint  of  the  evolution  of  culture  and 
civilization,  instead  of  as  a  record  of  wars 
and  battles,  this  conception  would  long  have 
been  more  generally  accepted.  But  in  the 
light  of  the  essential  facts  of  history,  who  can 
deny  that  the  demand  for  manual  training  has 
a  true  claim?  If  man's  reason  has  been  de- 
veloped by  working  with  tools,  if  the  work 
of  tools  depends  upon  man's  ability  to  han- 
dle them,  has  an  instruction  in  the  use  of 
tools  not  a  just  place  in  the  curriculum  of 
the  elementary  school?  This  age  of  a  tech- 
nical mastery  of  the  world's  forces,  of  com- 
merce and  industry,  of  printing  presses,  rail- 
roads and  electric  lights,  cannot  be  under- 
stood unless  the  child  is  introduced  into  a 
knowledge  and  appreciation  of  the  motive 
power  that  makes  this  world  of  human  ac- 
tivity move.  From  books  he  cannot  get  a  clear 
conception  of  that;  there  is  enough  which 
must  be  got  from  them,  but  which  will  re- 
main unintelligible  to  him,  a  mere  shadow, 
unless  he  has  a  basis  of  experience,  typical 

47 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

experience,  that  can  serve  him  as  a  key  to  un- 
derstand the  rest.  We  ought  to  take  our 
children  into  the  machine  shops  and  fac- 
tories to  make  them  see  with  their  own  eyes 
typical  illustrations  of  how  things  are  made, 
and  how  the  making  even  of  apparently  sim- 
ple things  requires  much  skill  and  ingenuity. 
And  better  still,  let  us  put  them  to  work  at 
such  things;  let  us  teach  them  the  use  of 
typical  tools,  such  as  the  needle,  the  knife, 
the  hammer,  chisel  and  saw;  .of  typical  ma- 
chines, such  as  stoves,  engines,  lathes,  sew- 
ing machines.  They  should  build  and  con- 
struct dresses  and  boxes,  chairs  and  dyna- 
moes;  they  should  invent:  designs,  pat- 
terns, models,  whatever  they  can.  They 
should  represent  dramatically,  as  it  were, 
and  at  the  same  time  actively  and  practically, 
the  various  busy  occupations  of  life.  Then 
their  conception  of  the  world  and  of  human 
activity  will  be  broadened  and  elevated. 

But  it  is  not  industrial  training,  it  is  not 
trade  schools  for  which  I  plead.  They  have 
their  proper  place  at  the  proper  stage,  in  a 
differentiated  system  of  public  instruction. 
Here,  however,  I  wish  to  emphasize  the  gen- 
eral educational  value  of  manual  culture,  its 
broadening  influence,  its  effect  upon  mind 
48 


The  Philosophy  of  the  Tool 

culture,  without  which  no  child  can  develop 
to  the  fullest,  were  he  to  become  a  lawyer,  or 
a  merchant,  or  a  shoemaker  in  later  life. 
Men  need  to  become  more  effective;  they 
ought  to  have  their  chance  of  experience  even 
in  childhood,  to  make  the  best  of  it  when  the 
mind  is  still  pliable.  They  should  have  an 
opportunity  to  test  their  faculties  all  around, 
when  it  is  still  time  to  grow,  to  mature,  to 
choose.  It  is  therefore  no  trade  exercise,  no 
one-sided  work  of  any  kind,  whose  introduc- 
tion in  schools  is  desired,  but  typical  exer- 
cises chosen  to  illustrate  the  possibilities  of 
the  human  mind  in  the  direction  of  produc- 
tive activity,  just  as  a  well  chosen  course  in 
reading  will  illustrate,  by  typical  selections, 
how  the  human  mind  has  conquered  the 
world  by  thought,  or  mirrored  her  life  in  its 
own  emotions. 


49 


VI 

Not  a  New  Branch,  but  a  Method 

In  reality  it  is  not  a  new  branch  of  instruc- 
tion for  which  a  plea  is  here  made,  even  tho 
manual  training  may  mean  a  reduction  of 
the  time  consumed  by  the  so-called  common 
branches.  But  these  common  branches  will 
be  the  gainers  thereby.  The  plea  is  made 
for  a  rational  method  of  instruction — the 
objective,  the  creative,  the  experimental 
method  as  against  the  book  method.  Each 
school  should  be,  in  a  sense,  a  laboratory 
where  all  branches  are  taught  by  the  help 
of  the  laboratory  method,  by  experiments 
and  tests  which  are  largely  conducted  by  the 
pupils  themselves.  If  there  exists  a  well  ar- 
1  ticulated  and  co-ordinated  course  of  instruc- 
!  tion,  there  is  mathematics  in  the  workshop, 
\  there  is  history  in  the  art  studio,  and  better 
i  logical  training  than  grammar  affords,  in 
the  science  laboratory;  and  there  is  health- 
ful exercise,  and  power,  and  inspiration  in 
all  these  things.  The  spirit  of  this  method 
must  pervade  all  school  work,  so  that  there 
be  reality  instead  of  names,  experience  and 
practice  instead  of  mere  rules,  self-expres- 
sion instead  of  routine  work,  individuality 
50 


Not  a  New  Branch,  hut  a  Method 

instead  of  a  common  average. 

Such  a  method  would  be  an  appeal  to  the 
natural  instincts  of  the  children  who  delight 
in  objective  and  constructive  activity,  whose 
play  instinct  is  gratified  by  this  work,  and 
who  will  profit  more  from  it  than  from  defin- 
itions, and  synopses,  and  booklore  generally; 
who  will  do  their  best  in  spontaneous  activ- 
ity, and  who,  being  allowed  to  work  in  their 
own  individual  way,  will  develop  the  power 
of  independent  thinking.  It  is  by  objectify- 
ing, as  it  were,  their  concepts,  by  reproducing 
what  they  see,  or  study  about,  in  tangible 
form,  that  they  will  test  their  power  of  ob- 
servation, correct  their  errors,  adjust  mis- 
proportions,  and  arrive  at  accurate  ideas. 

We  need  have  no  fear  that  the  language 
work  of  the  children  will  suffer,  if  so  much 
time  and  energy  be  given  to  manual  exer- 
cises. On  the  contrary,  our  pupils  will  have 
a  wealth  of  real  things,  of  things  that  inter- 
est them,  to  write  about.  One  who  can  think 
correctly,  will,  as  a  rule,  speak  and  write 
correctly;  and  it  is  a  common  experience 
that,  when  we  have  something  to  say,  we 
can  say  it.  But  normal  children  have  little 
to  say  about  fine  emotions  and  self-conscious 
reflections;   they   may  look   up   cyclopedias 

51 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

or  torment  their  parents,  their  older  broth- 
ers and  sisters,  for  "points",  and  yet  not 
produce  anything  of  much  use  to  themselves 
or  to  anybody  else.  But  they  can  tell  about 
what  they  have  seen  and  heard  and  handled 
and  made,  and  what  interests  them.  Such 
work  may  not  be  so  highflown  as  an  essay 
on  "The  Vindication  of  Xanthippe",  or  a 
critical  examination  into  the  feelings  of  a 
butterfly  on  a  summer's  morning,*  but  it  will 
be  more  genuine  and  helpful,  especially  if 
care  be  taken  not  to  mass  pupils  together, 
but  to  grant  each  a  chance  to  write  about 
what  he  knows  best.  Many  teachers  will 
testify  to  the  truth  of  the  statement  that  ap- 
parently dull  pupils,  who  were  simply 
weighed  down  by  the  routine  of  mass  work, 
suddenly  woke  up  and  displayed  a  remark- 
able power  of  observation  and  expression 
when  the  teacher  hit  upon  a  subject  which 
was  of  interest  to  them.  Thus,  when  a  point 
of  vantage  is  found,  an  avenue  can  soon  be 
opened  along  which  even  those  faculties 
which  are  either  dormant,  or  truly  weak,  can 
be  reached  and  more  or  less  developed. 
And  these  points  of  vantage  are  almost  in- 


*These  topics  are  actual  quotations. 
52 


Not  a  New  Branch,  but  a  Method 

variably  in  the  nature  of  objective  or  con- 
structive work,  of  play  or  spontaneous  ac- 
tivity which  commands  the  child's  supreme 
interest. 

In  this  way,  manual  work  proves  itself  as 
a  valuable  instrument  with  which  to  influ- 
ence the  growth  of  even  the  formal  arts  and 
more  abstract  faculties. 

But  the  manual  method  is  a  veritable 
savior  of  those  who  are  not  gifted  in  literary 
expression,  or  formal  mathematics,  or  gram- 
mar and  such  things;  whose  principal,  or 
only,  form  of  expression  is  in  the  making  of 
things.  They,  who  are  cast  out  as  dunces 
from  the  ordinary  school,  often  have  a  genius 
of  their  own  which  in  due  time  may  out- 
shine that  of  their  classmates  who  were  more 
successful  at  school.  Should  they  not  be 
considered?  Let  us  give  them  their  due, 
their  opportunity,  a  training  that  is  commen- 
surate to  their  faculties.  There  are  more  of 
them  than  some  may  suppose;  the  schools 
are  full  of  them,  only  their  native  genius  is 
repressed,  and  they  are  made  to  drag  on  in 
the  primary  classes  until  they  can  go  no  fur- 
ther, and  are  finally  allowed  to  depart  to 
drag  on  thru  life,  dwarfed,  spoiled,  robbed  of 
their  birthright.     These  who,  with  the  ex- 

53 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

ception  of  conquering  geniuses,  never  get  a 
chance  to  find  their  true  place  in  life,  and  to 
become  conscious  of  their  power  and  their 
limitations,  help  in  composing  the  vast  army 
of  the  inefficient  who  drift  along,  or  move 
in  ready  made  grooves  whither  they  know 
not,  but  cannot  make  their  own  road,  or  set 
up  their  own  goal. 

This  alone  would  also  prove  the  moral 
value  of  manual  training.  For  he  who  drifts 
instead  of  controlling  his  fate  as  far  as  hu- 
man effort  can  avail,  will  never  be  a  truly 
moral  man.  Morality  means  self-control,  self- 
determination,  self-direction.  And  manual 
training,  sense  training,  makes  for  truth — as 
far  as  human  mind  can  conceive  truth.  It 
sets  reality  against  semblance,  fact  against 
error,  test  against  illusion.  It  fosters  a 
scientific  spirit  as  opposed  to  opinionism 
and  prejudice.  It  means,  therefore, 
genuineness,  in  place  of  artificiality  and 
verbalism.  And  it  teaches  the  true  dig- 
nity, the  enormous  moral  significance  of  la- 
bor. "Work",  as  Carlyle  puts  it,  "is  the 
grand  cure  for  all  the  maladies  and  miseries 
that  ever  beset  mankind — honest  work  which 
you  intend  getting  done."  And  again :  "All 
true  work  is  sacred;  in  all  true  work,  were  it 
54 


Not  a  New  Branch,  hut  a  Method 

but  true  hand  labor,  there  is  something  of 
divineness."  Thru  honest  labor,  the  race 
and  the  individual  can  alone  be  saved  from 
rot  and  ruin,  from  decay  and  degeneration. 
But  above  all,  the  principle  of  manual  cul- 
ture recognizes  the  child's  natural  instincts. 
The  child  is  by  nature  constructive,  and  in 
gratifying  his  tendency  to  grow  intellectually 
by  the  work  of  his  hands,  we  are  but  in  ac- 
cord with  the  laws  of  natural  development, 
which  are  the  same  for  the  race  as  for  the  in- 
dividual. Mankind  has  reached  the  present 
high  state  of  civilization  by  conquering 
the  forces  of  nature  thru  industry,  the  devel- 
opment of  which  has  ever  been  the  truest  in- 
dex to  its  mental  and  moral  evolution. 


55 


PART  II.     ART  CULTURE  AND  ART 
EXPRESSION 


The  Esthetic  Attitude 

IN  this  age,  when  art  enters  into  all  the 
details  of  life,  when  it  represents  the 
stage  of  perfection  in  all  manufactures 
as  well  as  in  the  reproduction  of  the 
beautiful,  pure  and  simple;  when  the  ethical 
element  in  esthetic  culture  has  become  so 
widely  appreciated;  when  one  who  cannot 
at  least  enjoy  the  masterpieces  of  great 
artists,  is  hardly  counted  among  the 
truly  educated:  in  such  an  age  it  ought 
to  be  superfluous  to  plead  for  a  recognition 
of  art  education  in  the  curriculum  of  our 
schools.  And  yet,  drawing  and  modeling 
have  been  denounced  as  fads  which  take  up 
time  needed  for  more  necessary  and  funda- 
mental things.  More  necessary  and  funda- 
mental things !  If  it  is  the  end  of  education 
to  awaken  the  faculty  of  judgment  and  to 
build  up  a  moral  character,  to  produce  re- 
finement in  place  of  crudity  and  immaturity: 
is  it  not  worth  more  to  a  child  to  be  able  to 
appreciate  the  stern  grandeur  of  Michel  An- 
gelo's  Moses  or  the  chaste  beauty  of  a  Venus 
de  Milo,  and  to  have  learnt  to  express  his 
own  thoughts  of  beauty,  however  stammer- 
ingly,  in  a  drawing  or  clay  model,  or  in  some 

59 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

constructive  way, — than  to  spell  all  the 
words  in  the  English  language  by  heart,  or 
to  distinguish  between  "distributive  pro- 
nouns" and  "compound  indefinite  pro- 
nouns?" Without  knowledge  of  this  gram- 
matical distinction  he  may  yet  be  able  to  use 
very  fair  English,  and  if  he  should  have  for- 
gotten the  spelling  of  "idiosyncrasy",  he  can 
look  it  up  in  the  dictionary.  But  an  esthetic 
attitude,  such  as  will  result  from  careful 
training  in  art  conception  and  art  expression, 
during  his  young  years,  cannot  be  easily  dis- 
pensed with  or  quickly  replaced. 

Drawing,  at  least,  became  recognized  in 
the  program  of  some  schools  a  few  decades 
ago,  when  the  wave  of  the  practical-educa- 
tion idea  struck  them.  Under  the  watch- 
word :  We  must  give  our  children  a  prac- 
tical education,  many  pedagogical  sins  have 
been  committed.  It  was  claimed  that  it  was 
of  practical  benefit  to  a  child  if  he  would 
learn  to  draw  designs,  decorative  motives 
and  the  like;  just  as  it  has  been  suggested  to 
introduce  systematic  bookkeeping  into  the 
elementary  schools, — for  such  things,  it  is 
thought,  can  be  easily  converted  into  dollars 
and  cents  as  soon  as  the  young  person  goes 
out  to  earn  his  or  her  own  living,  or  pocket 
60 


The  Esthetic  Attitude 

money.  In  point  of  fact,  school  bookkeeping 
has  proved  itself  to  be  of  very  doubtful  value 
to  the  practical  merchant;  and  school  de- 
signing has  perhaps  been  even  less  market- 
able. But  still,  under  the  name  of  "indus- 
trial drawing"  a  great  deal  of  geometrical 
construction  and  conventional  designing  has 
been  done — and  is  being  done  yet  in  a  num- 
ber of  schools — mostly  in  the  form  of  copy- 
ing and  dictation.    But  this  is  not  art. 

Deeper  insight  into  child-psychology  has 
revealed  the  true  function  of  art  education. 


6i 


II 


Expression  thru  Art 

Art  training  in  schools  does  not  mean  in- 
struction in  drawing  only.  We  shall  see  la- 
ter that  drawing  is  in  fact  the  most  difficult 
part  of  the  art.  Art  training  includes  model- 
ing in  clay,  paper  cutting,  color  work, 
construction,  decoration  (on  paper,  in 
carving,  weaving,  etc.),  and  a  number  of 
other  occupations.  It  means  beautifying  the 
objects  the  child  handles,  or  makes,  or  loves. 
It  means  the  beautifying,  finishing  touch  to 
all  his  products.  Art  is  the  manifestation  of 
the  highest  genius  of  the  race;  it  makes  the 
creature  a  creator;  it  means  a  rebirth  of  the 
world,  from  the  mind  of  a  human  being,  so 
that  it  may  become  his  own  world,  his  own 
life,  his  own  glory  and  perfection.  It  is  thru 
art  that  man  divines  the  divine. 

Art  will  pervade  all  the  child  does.  It  is 
the  liberating  element  in  manual  culture.  It 
is  the  noblest  form  of  motor  expression.  It 
is  expression.  Let  us  be  definite  about  this : 
It  is  expression  as  much  as  language  is. 
The  language  of  the  pyramids  speaks  to  us 
with  a  powerful  voice,  and  the  wall-paint- 
ings of  ancient  Egypt  tell  us  more  about  her 
62 


Expression  Thru  Art 

civilization  which  has  long  since  vanished 
from  the  face  of  the  earth,  than  even  the 
papyrus  rolls  of  their  contemporaries.  And 
long  before  there  were  books,  there  was  art. 
The  carvings  of  the  Fiji  Islanders,  the  pic- 
ture writings  of  the  American  Indians,  the 
hieroglyphics  of  ancient  Peru  and  Mexico 
are  a  treasure  trove  of  ancient  historic  docu- 
ments. 

Thus,  even  to  a  young  child  of  a  mod- 
ern father  and  mother,  art  is  a  form  of  ex- 
pression which  develops  even  before  he  can 
express  his  conceptions  adequately  in  oral 
or  written  form.  The  child  loves  to  build 
structures  in  the  sand  and  mud,  or  with 
blocks  and  toys;  to  cut  out  and  draw,  long 
ere  he  can  write  a  composition  on  the 
thoughts  which  these  representations  em- 
body. He  who  can  read  a  child's  mud  pies 
and  scribblings,  will  get  a  deeper  insight  into 
his  nature  than  he  who  waits  until  the  child 
can  tell  him,  or  write  out  for  him,  what  he 
has  in  mind.  This  instinct  is  a  relic  of  race- 
history  and  must  be  so  understood  and  util- 
ized. With  many  people,  this  objective,  or 
graphic,  or  constructive  form  of  expression 
will  forever  remain  the  best  part  of  their 
self-manifestation;  and  the  revelation  that 
^2> 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

comes  to  us  of  the  genius  of  Raphael  in  con- 
templating his  wonderful  Sistine  Madonna, 
would  hardly  have  been  enhanced  if  he  had 
attempted  to  write  out  his  conception  of  di- 
vine motherhood  with  pen  and  paper.  And 
with  most  children,  representative  expres- 
sion, which  is  at  the  same  time  creative,  i.  e., 
art  expression,  will  strengthen  the  power  of 
right  conception  and  the  power  of  self-ex- 
pression in  general,  while,  if  it  is  condemned 
and  repressed  as  idle  play,  the  child's  psyche 
may  remain  crippled  forever. 

Children's  drawings,  then,  give  a  clearer 
and  more  comprehensive  account  of  their 
concepts  than  their  words  and,  later  on,  even 
their  written  exercises  will  ever  reveal.  Let 
us  remember  that  the  power  of  complete 
self-expression  in  language  is  given  to  few 
master  minds  only  and  develops  slowly  in 
any  one  of  us,  and  that  there  are  many  things 
at  all  times  which  we  can  better  illustrate 
than  tell.  Children's  drawings  expose  there- 
fore also  all  their  mistakes  in  conception, 
and  such  exposure  will  help  the  teacher  to 
discover,  and  correct,  erroneous  impres- 
sions. If  a  child  is  asked  to  illustrate  a 
story,  his  misconception  of  words  often 
shows  itself  significantly.  A  case  in  point  is 
64 


Expression  Thru  Art 

quoted  from  a  San  Francisco  primary 
school.  '"The  Old  Oaken  Bucket'  had 
been  read  to  the  little  tots  and  then  ex- 
plained to  them  very  carefully,  and  as  "busy 
work"  they  were  asked  to  copy  the  first  stan- 
za from  the  blackboard  and  illustrate  it  with 
a  drawing.  One  little  girl  handed  in  her  verse 
with  several  little  dots  between  two  of  the 
lines,  a  circle,  and  three  buckets.  'Lizzie, 
I  don't  understand  this',  said  the  teacher. 
'What  is  that  circle?'  — 'Oh,  that's  the  well.' 
—  'Why  have  you  three  buckets?'  — 'One  is 
the  old  oaken  bucket,  one  is  the  iron-bound 
bucket,  and  the  other  is  the  bucket  that  hung 
in  the  well.'  — 'Then,  what  are  all  of  those 
little  dots?'  — 'Why,  those  are  the  loved 
spots  which  my  infancy  knew.'  " 

It  is  well,  in  this  connection,  to  compare 
Professor  Earl  Barnes'  early  investigations 
on  children's  drawings.  In  No.  V  of  his 
"Studies  in  Education"  (Nov.  96)  he  repro- 
duces four  drawings  of  Washington  and  the 
Cherry  Tree,  by  children,  and  comments  upon 
them  as  follows:  "Do  not  the  pictures  il- 
lustrate the  way  in  which  a  child  pieces  all 
the  fragments  of  his  knowledge  together  in 
making  up  what  to  us  seem  very  simple 
concepts?     .     .     .     The  child  never  grasps 

65 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

the  absurdity  of  the  combination;  for  he 
does  not  take  the  whole  thing  into  conscious- 
ness at  once  as  we  should  do.  ...  If 
this  analysis  of  the  picture  is  correct,  then 
we  see  how  the  most  heterogeneous  elements 
are  combined  in  forming  concepts  under  our 
direction.  Is  it  not  much  the  same  with  us 
when  we  rise  to  higher  planes?  Take  for 
instance  our  conception  of  an  angel :  is  it  not 
pieced  together  from  just  such  odds  and  ends 
as  these?  If  this  analysis  is  right,  it  fol- 
lows, then,  that  in  education  we  need  to  con- 
sider not  only  the  fragments  that  we  insert 
into  children's  minds,  but  the  blended 
whole  that  they  piece  together." 

The  use  of  drawing  in  this  direction  ap- 
pears obvious.  And  it  is  well,  apart  from 
any  ambition  to  be  artistic,  that  we  should 
learn  to  express  our  concepts  graphically  in 
some  adequate  degree,  to  supplement  our 
language,  so  that  we  may  make  our  meaning 
clear  in  as  complete  a  manner  as  possible, 
when  occasion  arises.  If  we  wish  to  have  a 
certain  pattern  made,  or  give  a  direction  as 
to  some  piece  of  furniture  we  desire  to  have 
fitted  into  a  certain  space;  or  if  we  want  to 
describe  an  occurrence  that  we  have  wit- 
nessed; or  if  a  physician  desires  to  fix  some 
66 


Expression  Thru  Art 

microscopic  observation  on  paper;  anc 
thousand  other  ways, — some  skill  in  ui  aw- 
ing to  express  our  thoughts,  or  to  record  our 
observations — be  it  diagrammatically  or  by 
way  of  a  more  or  less  perfect  representation 
of  the  object — will  be  found  exceedingly 
helpful  and  often  indeed  indispensable.  Our 
words  not  infrequently  prove  insufficient  to 
describe  what  we  have  in  mind. 

Moreover,  an  effort  to  draw  an  object  will 
intensify  the  clearness  of  our  perception, 
and  bring  out,  and  fix  in  our  mind,  many  de- 
tails that  would  otherwise  have  escaped  our 
attention.  Drawing  shares  in  this  respect 
the  virtue  of  manual  reproduction  and  con- 
struction, and  we  shall  see  later  that  the  ar- 
tistic correlative  to  manual  construction, 
viz. :  clay  modeling,  has  its  peculiar  excel- 
lence. It  is  well  to  encourage  the  drawing 
of  the  objects  of  study,  in  the  laboratory,  in 
geography,  in  history,  etc.,  to  produce  more 
lasting  and  more  exact  impressions,  and  to 
test  the  correctness  of  the  concepts. 

I  do  not  pretend  to  say  that  this  kind  of 
representative  drawing  is  art  proper,  or  art 
as  yet;  just  as  little  as  the  compositions  of 
young  children  have  value  as  literature.  But 
it  helps  in  the  development  of  the  self,  and 
67 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

points  towards  art;   it  is  as  legitimate  a  form 
of  expression  as  any  other. 

Drawing,  it  has  been  said,  is  the  general 
language  of  construction.  It  enters  into  man- 
ual work  at  every  point,  and  geometrical  un- 
derstanding would  be  impossible  without  it. 
In  this  form,  it  is  not  an  immediate  art  ex- 
pression, but  may  be  a  means  towards  it,  if 
the  end  sought  is  the  expression  of  an  art 
idea,  as  in  architecture.  To  be  able  to  read  a 
working  drawing,  a  plan,  a  chart,  and  to 
make  such  drawings,  is  a  necessary  requisite 
in  manual  work.  But  this  does  not  imply 
that  a  course  in  the  technique  of  drawing,  in 
mechanical  drawing,  should  come  first.  Such 
a  course  would,  in  many  cases,  only  kill  the 
spontaneous  art  instinct  and  art  enjoyment. 
There  is  not  much  need  of  such  training  for 
children,  certainly  not  in  the  lower  grades. 
Exactly  as  we  must  not  apply  the  adult's 
standard  of  accuracy  to  the  productions  of  the 
child  in  the  field  of  manual  training  itself, 
just  as  little  is  there  need  of  enforcing  exact 
technique  In  the  drawings  that  enter  into 
that  work.  Only  when  the  child  himself 
feels  the  need  of  training  in  technique, 
should  instruction  therein  be  supplied.  As  a 
rule  it  will  suffice  to  point  out  a  few  simple 
68 


Expression  Thru  Art 

rules  and  devices,  and  let  the  rest  come  by 
practice  in  connection  with  actual  exercises. 
In  the  highest  classes,  in  connection  perhaps 
with  the  more  scientific  study  of  geometrical 
problems,  in  architectural  drawings  to  a 
scale,  and  for  the  purpose  of  assisting  the 
pupil  in  getting  better  control  over  the  mus- 
cles of  eye,  hand  and  fingers,  to  secure  finer 
adjustment,  more  stress  may  justly  be  laid 
upon  exact  drawings.  But  even  here,  we 
must  exercise  discretion  and  not  elevate  an 
exactness  which  is  possible  to  perhaps  only  a 
few,  into  a  fetich  to  be  worshipped  by  all. 
At  any  rate,  young  children  should  be  saved 
from  the  tyranny  of  this  superstition. 

I  wish  to  warn  art  teachers  against  the 
gospel  of  the  straight  line.  The  straight 
line  is  an  abstraction.  Nature  knows  of  no 
absolutely  straight  line,  except  perhaps  in 
minute  proportions.  The  straight  line  is  a 
mechanical  invention,  but  has  no  virtue  in 
itself  except  for  purely  mechanical  purposes 
—  for  manufacture  in  the  trade  sense.  Our 
children  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  They 
are  not  ripe  for  it— fortunately  not.  Their 
minds  cannot  yet  be  reduced  to  a  rectilinear 
conventionality.  There  is  no  character  in 
the  straight  line,  just  as  a  man  whose  path 
69 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

in  life  is  absolutely  straight,  is  either  an  an- 
gel or  a  fool;  either  a  mechanical  contriv- 
ance, a  soulless  pedant,  or  a  bigoted  fanatic, 
but  not  one  with  a  genuinely  human  char- 
acter. I  am  afraid  of  the  infallible.  To 
make  the  young  child  a  victim  of  the  soulless 
straight  line,  is  as  cruel  as  it  is  useless. 

True  art  is  more  than  reducing  the  ob- 
jects of  nature  to  a  geometrical  "type",  or 
than  their  mere  mechanical  reproduction;  in 
the  same  way  as  literature  is  more  than  an 
enumeration  of  the  things  the  author  has  in 
mind.  Art  and  literature  represent  the  indi- 
vidual attitude  of  the  artist  or  author  towards 
nature  and  life;  they  show  how  nature  and 
life  picture  themselves  in  these  human  minds. 
No  great  poem,  no  great  painting,  no  great 
work  of  sculpture  that  does  not  suggest  a  no- 
ble thought  or  a  noble  feeling,  a  thought  or 
feeling  that  had  been  in  the  minds  of  their 
makers,  struggling  for  expression.  A  great 
artist,  as  well  as  a  great  poet,  is  first  a  great 
man,  a  man  with  a  noble  soul,  which  is  re- 
vealed in  his  works.  Art  is  self-expression, 
and  from  it  we  may  read  character  as  we  do 
from  literature. 

Not  every  one  can  produce  literature  that 
will  become  the  common  property  of  the 
70 


Expression  Thru  Art 

world,  because  not  everyone  can  think  eter- 
nal thoughts,  or  has  literary  power  to  ex- 
press them  in  immortal  form.  But  every 
one  can  learn  to  express  his  own  thoughts  in 
his  own  words — not  very  fluently  perhaps, 
but  in  a  manner,  or  style,  peculiar  to  himself 
and  which  is  as  much  an  index  of  his  mental 
calibre  as  is  the  thought  itself.  Likewise, 
altho  not  everyone  can  produce  works  of 
art  worthy  of  a  Phidias  or  Raphael,  yet 
everyone  can  learn,  in  a  measure,  to  express 
himself  in  art  form,  if  he  is  left  free  to  do  it 
in  his  own  way  which  will  be  characteristic 
of  himself,  provided  he  has  something  to  ex- 
press. If  we  understand  art  to  mean  indi- 
vidual expression  of  a  thought  or  feeling, 
we  shall  at  once  perceive  that  for  every  at- 
tempt to  draw  or  model  anything,  there  must 
first  be  a  thought  or  a  feeling  in  the  child's 
mind,  one  which  is  his  own,  which  is  more 
or  less  spontaneous,  first  hand,  not  second 
hand,  intense,  full  of  motive  power  so  as  to 
struggle  for  expression;  and  second,  there 
must  be  as  little  as  possible  of  restraint,  of 
conventional  rule,  and  the  largest  possible 
latitude  for  individual  form  of  expression, 
freedom  and  individuality. 

There  must  he,  first,  a  thought  or  feeling 

71. 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

in  the  child's  mind  that  seeks  expression. 
The  clearer  this  is  understood,  the  better. 
A  realization  of  this  fact  will  once  for  all 
do  away  with  the  senseless  exercises  so  com- 
mon in  many  drawing  courses,  and  which 
mean  nothing  to  the  child.  If  we  study  the 
child  life  of  our  greatest  painters  and  sculp- 
tors, we  shall  find  that  they  did  not  go  to 
work  drawing  straight  lines,  or  a  cube,  or 
modeling  a  perfect  sphere.  Perhaps  there 
was  a  time  in  their  life,  later  on,  when  their 
minds  were  maturer,  when  they  had  to  en- 
dure the  drudgery  of  technique  to  perfect 
themselves  in  their  vocation.  But,  while 
they  were  young,  they  did  not  go  for  in- 
spiration to  cubes  and  spheres.  They  drew 
what  they  loved  most — they  took  a  bold 
hold  of  anything  in  their  environment  that 
appealed  to  their  innermost  soul  on  account 
of  its  beauty,  its  harmony  of  form  or  color, 
its  meaning  and  association.  They  would 
beautify  by  decoration  such  things  as  were 
dear  to  them:  the  first  leaf  in  an  album 
which  their  mother  had  given  them,  or  a 
scarf  they  would  present  to  their  sister,  or 
perhaps,  blushingly  and  full  of  strange  emo- 
tions, send  to  their  first  girl  love.  And  nothing 
would  seem  to  them  too  difficult  to  attempt. 
72 


Expression  Thru  Art 

They  gloried  in  color,  they  were  enrap- 
tured by  the  multitude  of  wonderful  forms 
surrounding  them.  Oh,  for  that  transcend- 
ent ecstacy  of  youth,  when  all  the  world  is 
ours,  when  we  do  not  yet  know  our  measure, 
when  we  strive  for  the  highest,  like  unto  the 
babe  that  will,  with  its  tiny  arms,  reach  out 
for  the  shining  moon!  Let  us  treasure  it  In 
our  memory,  let  us  jealously  preserve  it  in 
our  children.  They  will  run  against  the 
walls  which  hedge  in  the  province  of  the  pos- 
sible, only  too  soon;  and  when  the  time  of 
disappointment,  of  disillusion,  arrives,  then 
we  should  stand  at  their  side  and  guide  their 
steps,  and  revive  their  hopes,  and  strengthen 
their  power,  so  that  they  may  build  up  a  new 
world  of  reality  which  will  be  no  less  their 
own  than  their  world  of  beautiful  fancy  had 
been.  What  to  the  child  whose  mind  is  not 
yet  rational  would  have  been  like  cruel  ty- 
ranny, like  lack  of  sympathy,  what  would 
have  meant  for  him  a  disenchantment,  a 
spoliation — will  appear  to  the  struggling 
youth  like  a  new  revelation,  a  succor  and  re- 
lief whose  immediate  need  is  deeply  felt. 
We  must  render  technical  help  only  when  it 
is  needed;  or  it  will  have  the  effect  of  offi- 
ciousness  and  repression. 

73 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

Besides,  the  time  we  can  devote  to  art  edu- 
cation in  school  is  so  short,  so  few  of  the 
pupils  will  ever  be  in  a  condition  to  pur- 
sue art  as  their  life  vocation  when  they  will 
need  technical  drill,  that  we  should  bend  all 
our  energies  upon  inspiring  their  youthful 
soul  with  a  true  interest  in,  and  love  for,  the 
beautiful.  True  interest  and  true  love  mean 
not  merely  an  attitude  of  contemplation,  of 
admiration  for  beautiful  objects  and  works 
of  art;  but  the  desire  to  do,  to  be  ourselves 
a  power,  to  create  as  best  we  can. 

Art  work  should  therefore  be  co-ordinated 
with  all  those  activities  and  interests  in  which 
the  children  take  their  most  spontaneous  and 
deepest  delight.  Let  them  illustrate  the 
stories  they  enjoy  most;  design  and  weave  in 
color  blankets  for  their  doll's  beds;  model 
vases  and  decorate  them  with  gay  flowers  in 
water  colors  as  a  Christmas  present  for 
mother;  or  even  make  their  own  clay  dolls 
in  imitation  of  their  elders;  whatever  fas- 
cinates their  fancy,  or  interests  them  in  their 
lessons,  in  history,  geography,  literature — 
whatever  has  a  pictorial  element  (and  what 
has  not,  as  all  our  concepts  can  be  reduced  to 
more  or  less  distinct  images  from  the  world 
of  objects!)  :  all  these  are  so  many  chances 
74 


Expression  Thru  Art 

for  art  expression. 

If  we  watch  the  children's  own  spontane- 
ous activity  in  this  direction,  we  shall  find 
that  they  do  not  care  much  for  sentimental 
or  contemplative  subjects.  Their  interest 
centers  in  action;  in  motion  rather  than  in 
repose.  Stories  where  there  is  most  of  ac- 
tion have  the  intensest  attractions.  In  like 
manner  they  will  try  to  portray  action,  that 
is,  human  beings  and  animals  in  action;  and 
even  where  there  is  a  decorative  purpose 
pure  and  simple,  they  will  often,  like  the  an- 
cient Greeks  in  the  decoration  of  their  vases, 
prefer  illustrative  to  ornamental  motives.  It 
is  more  particularly  the  human  form  which 
attracts  attention,  and  is  represented  over 
and  over  again.  How  the  human  form  can 
be  converted  into  a  decorative  motive  of  of- 
ten grotesque  effect,  a  study  of  the  art  of  the 
North  American  Indians  will  soon  reveal. 
(Cf.  Figs.   I  and  2.) 

The  same  line  of  thought  suggests  the 
reason  why  I  have  pleaded  for  freedom 
from  restraint,  from  insistence  upon  rules, 
and  directions,  and  so-called  "systematic  de- 
velopment". Art  expression  is  a  very  sensi- 
tive thing.  It  is  just  in  the  beginning  of  its 
evolution  in  the  human  soul  when  it  bears 
75 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

the  least  interference.  Such  interference 
would  quickly  kill  the  germ  of  spontaneous 
creativeness.  And  it  is  a  great  mistake  to 
imagine  that  you  must  first  learn  to  draw,  or 
model,  a  detail,  before  you  can  produce  the 
whole.  The  child  sees  the  whole  first,  and 
the  part  last.  To  work  from  details  to  the 
whole  would  be  just  as  absurd  as  to  insist 
that  a  child  must  first  learn  to  spell  all  the 
words  he  may  possibly  use  some  time,  or 
master  all  the  rules  of  grammar  and  syn- 
tax, and  write  perfect  sentences,  before  he 
can  be  allowed  to  express  himself  in  lan- 
guage, by  writing  a  letter  or  a  composition. 
Sad  to  say,  this  thought-killing  method  is 
still  the  rule  in  only  too  many  schools,  and 
there  are  some  whose  pupils  are  not  given 
an  opportunity  to  say  what  they  really  think 
until  very  late  in  the  course,  if  at  all.  The 
result  is  a  dead  thing — rules  of  grammar  in- 
stead of  a  living  thought.  The  truth  of  the 
matter  is  that  the  children  will  learn  to  ex- 
press themselves  by  intuition,  by  imitation, 
by  absorption;  that  they  will  be  able  to 
write  or  speak  with  tolerable  accuracy  when 
they  have  something  to  say  and  are  given 
frequent  opportunities  to  express  them- 
selves; that  if  their  ideas  are  clear  and  cor- 
76 


Expression  Thru  Art 

rect,  they  will  find  little  difficulty  in  adequate 
expression.  The  prattle  of  children  is  so 
delightfully  suggestive  and  to  the  point,  be- 
fore it  becomes  hedged  in  by  rules  and 
"grammaticated",  that  its  repression  is  a 
crime  against  the  child-soul  and  its  inalienable 
right  of  self-preservation.  What  we  must 
work  for  is  the  thought,  and  the  details  will 
take  care  of  themselves,  at  least  for  a  while. 
Likewise  art  is  expression:  we  must  work 
for  the  thought  first  and  primarily.  Then 
as  to  method,  attention  must  be  paid  to  the 
general  aspect  of  things,  to  the  composition 
as  a  whole,  to  the  character  and  swing  of  the 
figures,  rather  than  to  the  details.  It  is  an 
error  to  think  that  a  child  must  draw  leaves 
before  he  can  draw  a  tree.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  is  easier  to  draw  a  whole  landscape, 
with  forests,  and  lakes,  and  houses,  than  to 
draw  a  single  leaf,  a  single  bough.  Illustra- 
tions of  this  fact  will  be  given  later.  We 
ought  to  work  down  from  the  whole  to  the 
parts,  not  exalt  the  parts  to  such  an  artificial 
importance  that  we  may  never  reach  the 
whole. 


77 


Ill 


An  Experiment,  and  Conclusions  Therefrom 

In  the  winter  of  1896-97,  an  experiment 
was  made  in  all  classes  of  the  "Ethical  Cul- 
ture School"  of  New  York,  under  my  direc- 
tion, to  test  the  pupils'  ability  to  represent 
the  human  figure  in  clay,  free-hand  paper 
cutting,  and  drawing.  Some  of  the  results, 
all  of  which  were  truly  remarkable,  are  here 
reproduced.  Figs.  3-7  show  some  of  the 
clay  figures  made  by  the  children  of  differ- 
ent grades.  The  originals  were  from  five 
to  twelve  inches  high,  and  while  the  clay 
was  fresh  and  the  figures  intact,  surprising- 
ly expressive,  spirited,  and  characteristic. 
No  general  directions  were  given  as  to  what 
figures  to  model  or  how  to  go  to  work.  All 
figures  are  imaginative.  Figs.  8  and  9  are 
freehand  cuttings  from  the  III.  Grade  (pu- 
pils of  about  eight  years  of  age)  ;  both  were 
made  from  the  object,  a  child  posing  for  the 
class.  Fig.  9  represents  a  boy  with  a  cane  in 
his  hand;  Fig.  8,  a  girl  writing  on  the  black- 
board. Fig  10  is  a  crayon  drawing  from 
the  same  grade;  Figs.  11  to  17,  from  the  iv. 
Grade  (as  to  Figs.  11  to  13,  it  may  be  said 

78 


t*^ 


o:^ 


a 


O 


A  B 

Figure  3.     Statuettes   of  the  human  form,  by  kindergarten  pupils. 

lower  left  hand  corner.     In  the  middle  of  the  picture  is  bunch 

of    grapes    by  a   First    Grade    pupil.     Group  A :   Red 

Riding  Hood  and  Wolf,  by  Second  Grade.     Figures 

B,  Squirrels,  and  C,  Swan,  by  Third  Grade. 


Figure  4.     Statuettes  by  Fourth  Grade 

Figures  j   and  4.      Clay    Figures 


rl 

1 

J- 

A 

^i.  an  v^ 

1^- 

1      ^ 

■H^ 

BJl 

] 

El 

t 

Figure  5.     Statuettes  by  Fifth  Grade 


fi^iWia* 


Figure  6.    Statuettes  by  Sixth  Grade 


^..^dij^il^t^ 


Figure  7.     Statuettes  by  Seventh  Grade 
Figures  J,  6  and  y.        Cla\  Figures 


Figure  lO.       Crayon  DriKviug  Grade  111 


/; 


,-ijP^«K*»"^ 


■-^■^^^^"■^-.'^.js^'^. 


-ii 


]>■ 


O 


^ 


So, 


s 

I 

s 


s 

"a 

s 


O 


o 


Q> 


n 

Figure  S  —  Girl  Writing         Figure  ()—Boy  with  Cane 
Freehand  Cuttings,  Grade  III 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

that  the  direction  was  given  to  omit  the  face 
if  that  proved  too  difficult)  ;  Fig.  i8,  from 
V.  Grade;  Fig.  19  from  vi;  Fig.  20  from  vii; 
Fig.  21  from  vill  Grade.  Figs.  14  to  17 
and  Fig.  2 1  are  by  children  who  showed  de- 
cided artistic  talent;  the  others  were  drawn  by 
ordinary  children.  In  the  viii.  Grade,  some 
previous  training  in  drawing  the  human 
form  had  been  given;  in  the  lower  grades, 
such  practice  had  been  only  incidental.  All 
the  drawings,  except  Fig.  21,  were  from  the 
object,  individual  children  posing  for  the 
others.  It  should  be  said  that  drawing  and 
modeling  was  a  regular  feature  of  the  cur- 
riculum of  the  school  where  the  experiment 
was  made. 

Without  discussing  these  productions  in 
detail,  we  may  draw  the  following  general 
conclusions : 

(i) — Children  are  much  more  creative 
and  able  to  express  a  thought  or  feeling  ar- 
tistically with  characteristic  force  than  is 
generally  supposed,  or  than  the  ordinary 
art  courses  in  schools  will  allow  them  to  put 
in  display  and  practice. 

(2) — They  are  better  able  to  represent 
the  general  swing  and  character  of  a  whole, 
even  one  wb'ch  is  apparently  so  difficult  as 
80 


An  Experiment,  and  Conclusions 

the  human  form,  than  to  produce  details  ac- 
curately and  in  proper  relation  to  the  whole. 

(3) — ^There  is  no  regular  progress  in 
ability  and  skill  from  the  lower  to  the  higher 
grades,  individual  differences  and  periodical 
fluctuations  manifesting  themselves  at  every 
step. 

(4)— In  clay  modeling,  the  results  are 
most  satisfactory,  comparatively,  while 
drawing  seems  to  represent  the  greatest  dif- 
ficulties. Freehand  cutting  occupies  an  in- 
termediate place. 

(5) — Freedom  from  restraint,  from  min- 
ute directions,  and  from  mechanical  exer- 
cises produces  the  best  results. 

With  this  last  conclusion  I  do  not  wish 
to  imply  that  a  child  needs  no  guidance  at 
all — that  it  is  enough  to  give  him  a  piece  of 
clay,  or  a  sheet  of  paper  and  a  pencil,  and 
tell  him,  Now,  go  on.  Certainly  he  needs 
advice,  he  needs  suggestion.  But  the  form- 
er should  be  given,  as  stated  before,  with 
much  discretion  on  the  part  of  the  teacher 
who  ought  to  have  himself  the  art  spirit,  and 
only  when  the  child  actually  needs  it;  not  pre- 
maturely, or  in  a  nagging  way.  And  the  teach- 
er's function  is  to  regulate  the  child's  at- 
tempts so  that  he  may  learn  to  choose  the 
81 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

best,  and  not  waste  time.  A  child  is  so  open 
to  suggestion,  and  so  dependent  upon  it. 

There  are  several  other  points  to  be  con- 
sidered in  this  connection: 

First — One  of  the  commonest  mistakes 
in  directing  children's  work  is  to  insist  upon 
completing  and  correcting  a  piece  of  work 
once  begun  until  it  is  "perfect".  The  same 
is  often  being  done  with  regard  to  essay 
writing:  children  are  made  to  write  an  es- 
say over  and  over  again  until  it  is  "free 
from  mistakes"  and  until  the  child  is  sick 
and  tired  of  it.  We  must  not  measure 
child's  work  by  an  adult  standard.  If  this 
is  true  of  any  kind  of  activity,  it  is  particu- 
larly true  of  art  expression  which  will  de- 
generate into  drudgery  as  soon  as  we  de- 
prive it  of  the  character  of  a  humanizing  en- 
joyment. If  a  young  child  is  forced  to  toil 
over  a  drawing  or  model  after  he  has  lost 
interest  in  it,  his  results  will  not  count  for 
much.  Better  let  him  begin  a  new  piece  of 
work,  even  tho  he  may  not  have  time  to 
finish  the  task.  Whatever  virtue  there  is  in 
the  completion  of  a  work  once  begun,  in  the 
patient  toiling  on  until  the  task  is  done: 
such  virtue  is  not  the  young  child's.  A 
child's  attention  cannot  be  fixed  long;  his 
82 


An  Experiment,  and  Conclusions 

nature  demands  frequent  changes  of  activ- 
ity and  interest.  The  child  is  making  only  a 
beginning  of  life;  and  it  is  our  privilege  to 
help  him  in  making  a  good  beginning.  Then 
we  can  be  hopeful  that  he  will  end  well.  The 
difficulty  lies  just  in  beginning  right.  The 
child  often  fails  in  the  execution  of  things 
because  he  began  wrong.  His  is  not  the 
ability  to  plan  ahead — such  circumspection 
is  but  slowly  acquired.  To  profit  from  his 
errors  is  the  wisdom  of  the  sage :  the  child 
possesses  little  of  this  wisdom.  He  must 
begin  many  times  before  he  will  realize  his 
error.  Therefore,  rather  than  insist  upon 
nice  and  exact  finishing,  let  us  encourage 
efforts  to  begin  right,  and  be  satisfied 
with  otherwise  crude  execution.  It  is  re- 
markable how  quickly  children  will  pro- 
gress after  they  have  learnt  how  to  begin, 
and  how  much  pleasure  they  will  then  take 
in  finishing. 

There  is  another  side  to  this  caution. 
The  toilsome  finishing  of  one  piece  before 
another  is  taken  up  will  not  only  seriously 
diminish  the  child's  interest  in  his  work; 
but  it  will  consume  an  undue  amount  of  time 
and  will  thus  deprive  him  of  the  benefit  of 
trying  his  hand  on  a  greater  variety  of  sub- 

83 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

jects.  Skill  comes  thru  practice — but  not 
so  much  thru  practice  within  a  limited 
circle  of  experience,  as  thru  such  that 
takes  in  a  wide  range  of  tasks  and  tests. 
The  child,  at  any  rate,  must  explore  a  large 
field  of  possibilities  before  he  will  discover 
the  little  groove  along  which  he  can  do  his 
best  and  quickest  work.  "There  is,"  said 
ex-President  Eliot,  "a  general  misunder- 
standing of  the  word  'thoro'  as  applied 
to  an  education.  There  should  be  a  distinc- 
tion between  a  sound  education  and  a  thoro 
training  in  insignificant  things.  'Thoro' 
is  an  exceedingly  mischievous  word.  It 
conceives  something  which  it  is  impossible 
for  an  adult  to  accomplish  and  which  it  is 
monstrous  to  try  to  force  a  child  to  under- 
take. Is  there  anything  in  which  any  of  us 
is  thoro?  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that 
anyone  can  become  thoro  in  any  branch 
of  human  endeavor.  It  is  often  a  terrible 
waste  of  time  to  attempt  it,  and  it  is  only 
in  a  mechanical  sense  of  the  word  that  it  is 
achieved.  If  one  could  get  rid  of  this  idea 
of  thoroness,  one  would  lighten  the  bur- 
dens of  childhood.  Thoroness  means  stu- 
pidity and  lack  of  interest.  Stimulate  the 
children  to  interest  and  the  children  will  be 
84 


An  Experiment,  and  Conclusions 

happy.  Diversity  of  studies  increases  in- 
terest and  that  interest  is  enjoyable  and 
wholesome,  .  .  ,  Under  the  pretense 
of  aiming  at  thoroness,  many  teachers 
positively  destroy  the  children's  interest. 
If  we  look  at  education  as  the 
cramming  of  information,  we  might  not  find 
time  for  the  subjects  that  help  to  increase 
the  richness  and  happiness  of  life". 

My  second  caution  is  this :  If  it  is  true 
that  the  child's  standard  is  not  that  of  the 
adult,  we  must  not  judge  of  a  child's  form 
of  expression  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
adult.  What  may  mean  nothing  to  us,  may 
mean  very  much  to  the  child.  In  other 
words,  we  must  take  the  child  at  his  own 
terms;  we  must  estimate  the  work  of  a 
child,  and  render  suggestion  and  direction,  on 
a  psychological  basis,  on  the  basis  of  the 
psychological  evolution  of  the  child-soul. 
The  child's  power  to  see  things,  to  under- 
stand things,  and  to  reproduce  things,  is 
limited,  and  his  ability  to  control  his  finest 
adjustments  of  muscles  and  nerves  so  as  to 
produce  exact  results  is  growing  at  a  very 
slow  rate.  Bui:  my  second  caution  means  a 
great  many  other  things  of  which  I  can  men- 
tion only  a  few  salient  points. 

»5 


IV 


Interpretation  and  Symbolism  in  Art  Expres- 
sion 

Let  us  compare  a  photograph  with  our 
mind-picture  of  the  same  scenery.  To  pro- 
duce a  photographic  picture  which  has 
something  of  the  quality  of  a  mental  image, 
is  in  itself  an  art.  Ordinary  photographs 
are  as  a  rule  disappointing;  they  contain 
many  details  of  whose  presence  we  were 
hardly  aware  and  which  disturb  the  har- 
mony of  our  impression;  and  the  very  things 
that  we  are  interested  in,  look  much  smaller 
and  more  insignificant  than  they  live  in  our 
memory.  The  reason  is  this :  a  photo- 
graphic camera  is  a  mechanical  eye  which 
records  in  a  mechanical  way.  But  the  hu- 
man eye  is  the  organ  of  our  mind.  What 
is  of  no  interest  to  us  we  hardly  see  at  all, 
while  those  objects  on  which  our  interest  is 
focused  stand  out  boldly,  and  really  out  of 
natural  proportions.  And  then,  a  very  in- 
distinct visual  image  may  call  up  very  dis- 
tinct mental  images,  or  memories.  Thus  we 
supply  from  our  memory  many  details  which 
as  a  matter  of  fact  we  do  not  see  at  all.  Let 
us  imagine  ourselves  watching  a  passing 
86 


Interpretation  and  Symbolism  in  Art 

procession:  now  and  then,  out  of  the  cur- 
rent of  faces  streaming  by,  some  familiar 
feature  strikes  us — the  color  of  somebody's 
hair,  a  Roman  nose,  a  full  beard  of  familiar 
cut.  We  recognize  these  as  belonging  to 
some  of  our  friends  whom  we  expected  to 
see  in  the  procession,  and  in  our  mind  we 
single  out  these  individuals,  supply  from 
our  memory  the  rest  of  the  face  and  figure, 
and  imagine  we  saw  it  all.  But  if  we  had 
taken  an  instantaneous  photograph  of  the 
same  scene,  the  probability  is  that  the  plate 
would  record  only  a  crowd  with  details  quite 
indistinguishable,  and  we  would  look  for  the 
figures  of  our  friends  in  vain.* 

Or  suppose  we  sail  on  the  high  sea.  In 
the  distance  there  appears  a  small  dark  spot; 
the  object  comes  nearer:  we  recognize  a 
steamer  crossing  our  path.  We  see  the 
smoke  stack  and  the  bridge;  we  even  imag- 
ine we  see  the  people  moving  about,  and 
a  great  many  details.  If  we  take  a  photo- 
graph of  the  steamer,  ever  so  large  and  dis- 


*Cf.  in  this  connection  the  two  illustrations  on  pages 
519  and  520  in  "The  Open  Court",  September,  1897; 
the  first  representing  the  Papal  procession  in  the  Basilica, 
during  the  ceremony  of  canonisation,  from  an  actual 
photograph ;  the  second,  the  same  scene,  drawn  from  the 
preceding  photograph  by  E.  Limmer  for  the  Illustrirte 
Zeitung. 

87 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

tinct,  the  chances  are  that  we  shall  recognize 
few  of  these  details.  We  had  supplied 
them  from  our  stock  of  previous  experi- 
ences; we  had  seen  them  with  our  mind's 
eye,  because  we  knew  they  were  there.  But 
to  our  physical  eye,  these  details  were  really 
indistinguishable. 

This  means  that  we  interpret  what  we  see 
according  to  our  greater  or  lesser  stock  of 
previous  experiences;  that  we  magnify  ob- 
jects which  are  familiar  or  of  interest  to  us; 
that  we  single  them  out;  while  unfamiliar  or 
uninteresting  objects  remain  in  the  back- 
ground. In  primitive  art,  important  ob- 
jects or  personages  are  invariably  repre- 
sented in  larger  proportion  than  the  rest  of 
the  picture. 

As  in  oral  descriptions,  different  persons 
will  give  very  different  accounts  of  the  same 
scene  or  occurrence,  so  artists  will  produce 
very  different  representations  of  the  same 
scenery.  The  reason  is,  they  were  different- 
ly impressed;  with  their  minds'  eye  they 
saw  different  things  in  different  relations. 
Here  again,  we  have  a  corroboration  of  the 
truth  previously  emphasized,  viz.,  that  art 
is  not  a  mere  recording  of  facts,  but  the  ex- 
pression of  an  individual  attitude. 
88 


Interpretation  and  Symbolism  in  Art 

It  seems  very  plain,  then,  that  children 
will  represent  things  quite  differently  from 
what  adults  might  expect.  They  will  see 
with  the  minds  of  children,  not  with  that  of 
an  adult.  Things  that  interest  them  most, 
tho  they  may  not  seem  very  essential  to 
us,  will  appear  most  prominent,  even  magni- 
fied, in  their  drawings;  and  their  know- 
ledge of  the  quality  and  structure  of  objects 
differing  from  ours,  their  pictures  will  dif- 
fer. But  they  will  often  record  all  they 
know  of  an  object,  even  tho,  at  the  time 
of  drawing,  they  did  not  see  these  details, 
and  by  the  laws  of  perspective  could  not 
possibly  have  seen  them  from  where  they 
sat.  They  will  sometimes  draw  in  a  manner 
as  if  they  could  see  around,  or  thru,  an 
object.  Fragmentary  and  unharmonized, 
unconscious  of  law  and  logical  order  as  their 
thinking  is,  so  their  pictures  will  be  a  conglom- 
eration of  unharmonized  representations 
which  to  our  cultivated  and  trained  minds 
may  appear  as  very  bungling  attempts  at 
art.  And  yet,  we  ought  to  judge  them  on 
their  own  merit,  and  understand  the  child's 
standpoint  and  stage  of  development. 

Then,  after  all,  art  expression  is  in  its 
very  nature  symbolical.  If  we  look  at  a 
89 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

bold  pencil  drawing  where  a  very  few  tell- 
ing lines  indicate  a  hill- with  trees,  a  cottage 
on  top  and  the  sea  in  the  background:  we 
admire  the  sketch,  and  it  means  something 
to  us,  not  because  it  is  an  exact  copy  of  na- 
ture, but  because  the  art  of  the  designer  con- 
jures up  in  our  mind  memory  images  of  hills 
and  trees  and  the  sea.  We  clothe  the  poor 
sketch  with  all  the  colors  of  life  from  our 
own  previous  impressions.  Or  rather,  the 
drawing  opens  up  an  avenue  of  thought  to 
us;  thru  it,  as  it  were,  we  view  distant 
scenes  as  once  they  have  been  present  to  our 
enraptured  eyes.  No  matter  whether  the 
artist  would  add  color  to  his  sketch :  the 
most  ingenious  painting  falls  far  short  of 
nature  and  is  but  a  symbol  of  what  it  repre- 
sents. By  a  skillful  arrangement  of  color 
effects  we  are  reminded  of  actual  sense  im- 
pressions, and  our  memory  supplies  what  a 
picture  can  never  exhibit.  We  interpret 
pictures  as  we  interpret  the  image  of  real 
things  on  our  retina,  by  what  we  see  with 
our  inner  eye. 

Symbols    are    all    more    or    less    conven- 
tional;  and  if  art  is  symbolical  in  character, 
it  must  use  conventional  ways  which  only  the 
initiated  will   fully  appreciate.     It  may  be 
90 


Interpretation  and  Symbolism  in  Art 

difficult  for  us  to  realize  that  our  master- 
pieces of  art  employ  conventional  symbols 
needful  of  interpretation.  And  yet,  this  is 
a  fact,  tho  we  may  admit  that  art  has 
reached  a  perfection  which  makes  it  a  much 
more  ready  vehicle  of  thought  than  it  was 
on  any  previous  stage.  Egyptian  paintings 
look  very  awkward  to  us,  but  to  the  ancients 
they  meant  as  much  as  a  modern  painting 
does  to  us. 

Conventional  symbols  in  art  will  corre- 
spond very  closely  to  the  ability  of  the  mind 
to  interpret  the  world  around  it,  even  tho 
the  mind  will  often  outgrow  one  set  of  sym- 
bols more  quickly  than  it  is  able  to  construct 
a  new,  progressive  set.  Our  modern  pic- 
tures, however,  are  not  readily  intelligible 
to  a  savage,  or  a  young  child.  And  further- 
more, the  difference  in  artistic  taste  may  in 
the  last  instance  be  explained  by  the  as- 
sumption that  there  are  individual  differ- 
ences of  interpretation — that  the  symbols  of 
one  are  not  the  symbols  of  another — that 
one  way  of  painting  a  picture  may  not  as 
readily  call  up  mental  images  in  the  minds 
of  certain  individuals  as  another.  A  visit  to 
one  of  the  larger  galleries  where  different 
schools  of  painting  and  sculpture  are  repre- 

91 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

sented,  if  some  attention  is  paid  to  the  re- 
marks of  the  people  looking  at  the  pictures 
and  statues,  will  soon  convince  everyone  of 
the  truth  of  this  observation. 

All  this  simply  proves  that  there  are  in- 
dividual attitudes  in  art  expression  as  well 
as  in  art  appreciation.  Applied  to  children's 
work,  it  means  that  we  must  often  respect 
their  individual  form  of  expression  when  it 
may  be  difficult  for  us  to  understand  it.  And 
there  is  a  deeper  reason  for  judging  of  chil- 
dren's productions  in  this  sense,  on  their  own 
merits. 


92 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 

Symbolism  in  artistic  expression  is  mani- 
festly not  an  arbitrary  thing;  it  is  not  man- 
ufactured, or  invented,  by  some  artist,  or 
clique  of  artists.  It  represents  a  mode  of 
thinking;  it  corresponds  to  an  attitude  of 
the  mind,  to  its  degree  of  ability,  as  said  be- 
fore, to  apperceive  and  interpret  the  world 
around  us.  The  form  in  which  the  artistic 
idea  expresses  itself,  is  a  growth,  as  is  lan- 
guage which  is  thoroly  symbolical.  Look- 
ing up  the  words  of  the  English  lan- 
guage in  an  etymological  dictionary  will 
soon  convince  us  of  this  fact.  Growth,  how- 
ever, is  subject  to  biological  laws,  and  its 
subsequent  stages  are  determined  by  the 
working  of  these  laws.  It  is  exceedingly  in- 
teresting to  study  the  stages  thru  which 
our  race  has  passed,  in  art  expression. 
There  is  a  long  way  from  the  art  of  the 
savages,  thru  Assyrian  and  Egyptian,  to 
Greek  and  Roman  art,  and  from  there  to 
our  own  time.  And  there  are  detached 
branches,  or  separate  saplings,  that  had 
their  own  growth,  such  as  Chinese  and  Jap- 
anese art.  The  true  significance  of  the  con- 
ception of  art  expression  as  a  growth,  sub- 

93 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

ject  to  biological  laws,  will  reveal  Itself  to 
us  if  we  remember  that  there  is  a  close  par- 
allelism between  the  development  of  the 
soul  of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race. 
A  child  passes  from  birth  to  maturity 
thru  a  continuous  series  of  stages,  or 
periods,  each  of  which  is  a  revival  of  an 
epoch  in  the  history  of  culture.  He  passes  ; 
thru  the  same  stages  of  mental  develop- 1 
ment  thru  which  the  race  has  passed.  ^ 
Observations  of  children  have  established  : 
this  fact  beyond  a  doubt.  And  this  sequejice:^- 
of  mental  culture  epochs  is  but  the  spiritual 
side  of  a  well-known  biological  phenom- 
enon, viz.,  the  evolution  of  the  human  body 
from  its  incipient  embryonic  stage  thru 
a  series  of  forms  which  broadly  correspond 
to  the  characteristics  of  lower  forms  of  life, 
until  finally  the  mature  human  form  is  per- 
fected. And  as  even  the  adult  body  con- 
tains a  number  of  so-called  rudimentary  or- 
gans which  are  of  no  apparent  service  in  the 
present  stage  of  human  development,  but 
are  relics  of  past  stages:  so  there  are  in  our 
mind  many  rudimentary  traits,  or  atavistic 
peculiarities,  which  remind  us  that  we  owe 
our  present  civilization  to  a  process  of  long 
evolution  from  savage  conditions.     In  chil- 

94 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 

dren,  these  traits  are  easily  distinguishable 
by  the  psychologist. 

In  the  development  of  art  expression,  we 
can  clearly  discriminate  these  mental  culture 
epochs,  from  childhood  to  adult  age,  and 
this  very  fact  proves,  as  said  before,  that 
the  deeper  cause  of  difference  in  the  form 
of  artistic  expression,  between  the  child  and 
the  adult,  is  due  to  biological  laws  even 
tho  we  may  not  yet  understand  the  psy- 
chological process.  Some  experiments  which 
I  had  occasion  to  make  have  given  some  de- 
gree of  certainty  to  this  view. 

These  experiments  were  made  at  the 
"Ethical  Culture  School"  in  1894,  for  the 
purpose  of  ascertaining  in  what  measure 
children's  drawings  would  correspond  to 
savage  and  Egyptian  drawings  of  the  same 
kind  and  of  kindred  themes.  In  Egyptian 
work,  all  objects  are  so  drawn  as  to  expose 
their  characteristic  side  to  view.  The  ground, 
roads,  meadows,  ponds,  are  drawn  as  they 
would  appear  from  above;  a  man  standing 
on  the  opposite  side  of  an  oval  pond  looks 
as  if  he  were  placed  on  a  blue  bag.  Let  us 
look  at  Fiff.  22,  a  pond  with  palms.*     The 


*From  Dr.  K.  Oppel,  "Das  alte  Wunderland  der  Pyra- 
midcn",  Leipzig,  1881,  p.  148. 

95 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 


Figure  22 


artist  paints  the  pond  rectangular  in  shape, 
hned  in  with  yellow  sandstone,  just  as  if  he 
were  drawing  a  diagram  or  plan,  or  work- 
ing drawing  of  it.  On  the  side  of  the  pond 
towards  the  observer  there  stand  three  palm 
trees;  on  the  opposite  side  only  two.  Con- 
sequently, three  of  them  are  drawn  in  front 
of  the  diagram,  the  other  two  behind  it,  as 
it  were.  As  the  trees  are  of  about  equal 
height  in  nature,  they  are  drawn  equally 
high. 

In  the  experiment,  the  pupils  of  all  classes 
were  requested  to  draw  a  pond  with  trees  in 
front  and  on  the  opposite  side;    the  rectan- 
96 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 

gular  form  was  mentioned  only  to  the  pri- 
mary and  grammar  classes.  No  child  drew 
the  picture  exactly  in  the  Egyptian  style. 
Five  groups  could  be  distinguished.  The 
most  immature  method  showed  a  radial  ar- 
rangement of  the  trees  {Fig.  23) .  This  meth- 


Figtire  23 

od  was  characteristic  of  43  per  cent,  of  the 
kindergarten  pupils ;  some  pupils  were  found 
in  every  class  up  to  12  years  of  age  who 
had  not  advanced  beyond  this  primitive,  or 
rudimentary,  form  of  representation.  The 
same  method  is  recognized  in  the  Egyptian 
picture  of  the  brickmakers'  pond,  in  Fig.  28. 
It  is  parallel  to  the  one  employed  in  Fig.  24, 

97 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 


Figure  28 
representing  a  Shaman's  Lodge  (Alaska)  ; 
the  figures,  arranged  radially  along  the  four 
sides,  are  meant  to  designate  people  seated 
around  the  walls  of  the  Lodge.*  In  the 
second  and  third  groups,  the  pond  was 
drawn  strictly  rectangular,  as  in  the  Egyp- 
tian drawing.  About  50  per  cent,  of  all 
drawings  were  of  this  class.  Group  II  had 
the  trees  arranged  in  various  symbolical 
ways  of  which  Fig.  25  is  a  fair  example. 
With  this  may  be  compared  Fig.  26,  a  sym- 
bol taken  from  an  Ojibwa  Chant,  meaning 
"It  is  growing,  the  tree".  The  symbol  rep- 
resents "Mide  wigan  (the  Medicine  Lodge) 
with  trees  growing  around  it  at  the  four  cor- 
ners.  * 


*Taken  from  the  Annual  Report   of  the   Bureau   of 
Ethnology,  1888-89,  P-  507. 
♦Report  of  Bur.  of  Ethn.,  1888-89,  p.  245. 

99 


Trees    i    and  3   are  meant  to  stand  on  the 
opposite  side;  2  and  4,  on  the  near  side 


Figures  25  {upper),  26  {lower) 
100 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 

Group  III  is  represented  by  Fig.  27  where 
the  trees  are  drawn  in  natural  position.  An- 
other group  shows  the  rectangle  of  the  pond 
drawn  more  or  less  in  perspective;  and  the 
fifth,  represented  only  by  the  maturest  chil- 
dren of  the  highest  classes,  drew  a  perfect 
landscape. 

Another  set  of  drawings  was  based  upon 
Figs.  28  and  29.  Fig.  28  shows  Egyptian 
prisoners  of  war  making  bricks;*    the  bricks 


Figure  29 


are  arranged  in  rows  on  the  ground,  and 
not  in  piles  as  it  may  seem.  The  five  groups 
in  Fig.  29,  Coffin-makers,*  tho  drawn  one 
above  the  other,  each  on  a  separate  base. 


*Oppel,  loc  cit,  p.  144- 
*Oppel,  loc.  cit.,  p.  143. 


lOI 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

must  be  considered  as  being  really  on  the 
same  plane,  so  that,  e.  g.,  the  glue  pot  is 
on  the  left  of  the  resting  man,  and  the  two 
vases  are  standing  behind  the  coffin,  and 
would  have  been  partly  hidden  from  view 
had  the  artist  drawn  the  picture  in  perspec- 
tive. The  two  pictures  illustrate  the  prin- 
ciple in  Egyptian  drawing  that  objects 
whose  real  position  is  behind  one  another, 
are  drawn  above  one  another;  whatever  the 
artist  knows  is  there  and  is  exposed  to  view 
according  to  this  principle. 

In  the  experiment  at  the  "Ethical  Culture 
School",  the  pupils  were  invited  to  draw  a 
picture,  representing  a  shoemaker  on  this 
side  of  a  road,  working  in  the  open  air,  and 
a  carpenter  at  work  on  the  opposite  side. 
Fig.  30  is  a  specimen  of  the  manner  in  which 
a  majority  of  the  children  solved  the  prob- 
lem.    It  requires  no  comment. 

In  order  to  prove,  by  way  of  parenthesis, 
that  we  are  here  dealing  with  actual  develop- 
mental periods  in  the  life  of  the  individual 
child,  the  following  three  sketches  are 
presented  (Figs.  31,  a,  b,  and  c).  All  three 
are  the  work  of  the  same  individual  who  is 
now  a  well-known  landscape  painter  of  orig- 
inal powers.  Fig.  31a  exhibits  his  response 
102 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 


Figure  30 

to  the  problem  described,  when  he  was  a 
boy  of  13  in  the  Fifth  Grade  of  the  Ethical 
Culture  School.  The  interesting  still-life 
(Fig.  31b)  was  sketched  by  him  in  water 
color  when  he  graduated  from  the  school,  at 
the  age  of  16  or  17.  Fig.  31c  is  a  five-min- 
ute sketch  of  the  author  of  this  volume, 
drawn  by  the  same  artist  a  few  years  ago. 
The  progress  in  conception  and  perspective 
103 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

is  most  instructive.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  the  man's  power  is  now  in  landscape 
painting. 

It  may  be  added  that  the  statuettes  made 
by  the  younger  and  the  less  artistic  children 
(cf.  Figs.  3-7)  remind  one  very  strongly  of 
Assyrian  statuettes  of  which  there  may  be 
found  a  large  and  instructive  collection  at 
the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  in  New 
York. 

The  parallelism  between  the  work  of  chil- 
dren and  that  of  savages  and  ancients,   as 
demonstrated  by  the  experiments  of  which 
there  has  been  here  given  a  brief  account,  is 
certainly  very  striking.     It  can  be  observed 
that   the    same   biological   laws    that   deter- 
mined the  working  of  the  human  mind  in  the 
race,  are  still  at  work  in  the  evolution  of  the 
child-soul  from  infancy  up  to  adult  age,  and 
shape  the  children's  artistic  expression.     All     \ 
children  pass  thru  a  sequence  of  epochs  altho      ^ 
perhaps  not  everyone  thru  all,  or  not  all  thru     4 
the  different  periods  in  exactly  the  same  way.    a 
The  difference  is  determined  by  different  sets^; 
of  hereditary  and  environmental  influences.  ^ 
Some  may,  in  this  form  of  expression,  never 
develop     beyond     the     savage     stage,     tho 
representing  modern  culture  in  other  forms 
104 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 

of  expression.  With  others,  it  may  be  just 
the  other  way.  But  we  learn  from  this  at 
least  that  we  must  take  children  on  their 
own  terms,  and  judge  their  work  from  the 
standpoint  of  psychological  evolution.  Al- 
so, that  art  instruction  can  well  be  correlated 
with  history,  and  that  the  teaching  of  his- 
tory, which  is  a  record  of  these  culture 
epochs  in  the  development  of  the  race  and 
of  individual  nations,  might  perhaps  be  so 
adjusted  that  these  epochs  be  represented  in 
an  order  which  would  coincide  with  the  cor- 
responding stages  in  the  child's  mental  ad- 
vancement. This,  of  course,  is  a  topic  by  it- 
self. It  has  been  demonstrated,  however, 
that  children  will  take  great  interest  in  the 
creations  of  savage  art;  and  that  they  will, 
with  genuine  enthusiasm,  work  in  ancient  or 
primitive  fashion. 

This  work  may  consist  in  direct  reproduc- 
tions of  primitive  creations;  and  in  inven- 
tive and  imaginative  models  and  drawings 
of  new  themes,  after  studying  samples  of 
primitive  art  treating  of  parallel  subjects 
or  intended  for  similar  purposes.  Especial- 
ly in  modeling  and  designing,  children  will 
imitate  savage  and  ancient  patterns,  or  work 


105 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

inventively  in  primitive  style,  with  surpris- 
ingly good  results.  Teachers  are  aware  of 
the  ease  with  which  children  reproduce  In- 
dian pottery.  Model  5  in  Fig.  38  is  the  re- 
production from  memory  of  a  Grecian  capi- 
tal; the  upper  model  in  Fig.  32  represents 
the  Finding  of  the  Child  Moses,  modeled  af- 
ter studying  Assyrian  bas-reliefs;  the  mid- 
dle figure  on  the  same  plate  is  a  frieze  for 
a  temple  of  Ceres,  composed  by  a  child  af- 
ter studying  Greek  models;  and  Figs.  33- 
35  are  colored  drawings  of  an  Indian  vase 
from  the  object,  with  original  decorations 
designed  in  savage  fashion. 

Showing  them  samples  of  primitive  art 
has  also  this  advantage  that  the  children, 
seeing  art  work  to  whose  standard  they  can 
attain,  will  take  courage  to  apply  them- 
selves, while  the  holding  up  of  modern 
standards  may  sometimes  produce  a  very 
disheartening  effect  upon  youthful  students. 
Indeed,  it  requires  much  discretion  to  create 
the  proper  environment  for  young  children; 
and  tho  I  am  heartily  in  sympathy  with 
those  who  desire  to  introduce  reproductions 
of  the  masterpieces  of  art  into  every  school- 
room, I  feel  that  in  the  selection  of  typical 
representations,  samples  of  primitive  art 
106 


Artistic  Culture  Epochs 

must  not  be  omitted.  And  we  would  do  a 
great  injustice  to  primitive  artists  if  we 
would  suppose  their  work  to  be  altogether 
crude.  It  is,  in  many  respects,  very  crude 
indeed;  but  there  are,  especially  in  decora- 
tive effects,  pieces  of  exquisite  beauty  among 
the  productions  of  savage  art. 

We  should  be  deceived  if  we  would  ex- 
pect a  daily,  steady  and  regular  progress  in 
the  child.  The  development  of  a  child  is 
in  outward  appearance  a  fitful  process: 
there  are  periods  of  rapid  improvement  al- 
ternating with  times  of  indolence  and  even 
of  seemingly  retrogade  movement.  We 
need  not  worry  over  this  phenomenon.  A 
child  does  not  grow  in  concentric  spheres; 
but  his  vital  forces  swell  now  in  this,  now  in 
another  direction.  Like  the  oak  whose 
branches -spread  to  all  points  of  the  com- 
pass, in  irregular  order,  and  which  during 
the  winter  only  seems  to  sleep  while  the 
forces  within  are  preparing  for  a  new  bud- 
ding time:    so  the  child  has  his  seasons.* 

*Cf.  p.  8i,  No.  3. 


107 


VI 


Suggestions  as  to  a  Course  in  Art  Training 

If  I  were  to  suggest  a  series  of  exercises 
in  art  expression,  I  should  recommend  first 
of  all,  conceptional  work.  By  this  I  mean 
representations  from  memory  such  as  the 
children  are  most  interested  in.  All  of  their 
spontaneous  work  is  conceptional,  that  is 
they  represent  from  memory  things,  or 
scenes,  they  have  seen  and  witnessed.  This 
work  can  be  made  very  interesting  and  help- 
ful, in  that  it  will  encourage  the  children  to 
_x)bserve  more  carefully.  It  will  also  open 
up  to  the  teacher  a  new  avenue  for  studying 
the  child— what  the  child  likes  best,  what  he 
observes  most  closely,  under  what  conditions 
he  lives,  what  he  remembers  most  readily, 
etc. 

Another  group  of  work  is  also  concep- 
tional, but  with  this  difference,  that  the  ob- 
ject to  be  represented  will  be  placed  before 
the  children.  This  is  what  is  commonly  call- 
ed objective  work.  But  the  child  does  not 
really  work  from  the  object  as  this  is  usually 
understood;  he  does  not  produce  a  copy  of 
the  object,  more  or  less  perfect  in  propor- 
tion to  his  greater  or  lesser  skill.  None  of 
io8 


Suggestions  as  to  a  Course  in  Art  Training 

us  draw  from  the  object,  or  draw  the  object 
itself.  That  is  an  elliptical  way  of  putting 
it.  We  draw  what  we  see  (and  all  of  us  see 
with  different  eyes),  and  as  we  see  it,  that 
is,  as  the  object  impresses  us.  In  other 
words,  we  draw  from  our  mind,  we  draw 
the  mental  image  of  an  object.  The  pres- 
ence of  the  object,  while  we  reproduce  it 
artistically,  will  intensify  the  mental  image; 
it  will  re-enforce  our  concept.  But  tho 
between  every  looking  up  at  the  object  and 
every  looking  down  at  our  paper  or  lump 
of  clay  there  may  pass  only  a  moment  of 
time,  our  work  itself  is  no  less  from  memory 
than  when  the  object  is  not  present  at  all. 
This  is  the  reason  why  individual  differ- 
ences assert  themselves  so  plainly  in  the 
drawings  or  models  of  a  class  of  children 
working  from  the  same  object.  In  each 
one's  mind,  there  is  a  different  image  of  the 
form  from  which  they  work.  Hence  this 
method  also  deserves  the  name  concep- 
tional.  A  good  way  of  procedure  is  to  con- 
nect the  work  with  an  observation  lesson, 
and  sometimes  to  remove  the  object  of  study 
before  the  children  begin  to  draw  or  model 
it. 

Another    exercise    is    imaginative    work 
109 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

which  is  practically  artistic  composition: 
the  putting  together  of  conceptional  ele- 
ments into  a  new  combination  to  form  a  new 
whole.  Illustrative  work  belongs  here,  il- 
lustrations of  stories,  events  in  history  and 
the  like.  Children  have  a  very  lively  imagi- 
nation, and  if  given  scope  they  will  surprise 
us  by  their  ingenious  compositions.  The 
Moses  bas-relief  in  Fig  32  is  a  sample. 
Fig  36  is  an  imaginative  drawing,  "Priam's 
visit  to  the  Tent  of  Achilles",  by  an  eight 
year  old.  Fig.  37  is  a  winter  scene  com- 
posed by  a  little  French  girl  whose  nationality 
is  plainly  discernible  in  her  drawing. 

The  fourth  and  last  exercise  is  decorative 
work — designs  of  all  kinds,  in  pencil  and 
color,  in  carving  and  weaving,  in  bas-relief 
and  sculptural  ornament.  This  work,  too, 
calls  for  a  great  amount  of  invention,  and 
children  will  take  great  pride  in  it,  as  is  seen 
as  low  down  as  in  the  Kindergarten,  if  they 
are  given  the  proper  incentive.  In  other 
words,  there  must  be  the  stimulus  of  a  genu- 
ine interest  in  the  object  of  decoration.  The 
work  must  not  be  aimless,  but  always  to  a 
certain  purpose;  that  means  we  must  give 
the  children  some  special  thing  in  which  they 
have  an  interest,  some  surface,  to  decorate, 
no 


H  7  8  9  10 

Figure  jS.       C/riy   Mo^/r/n/g 


Figure  2y.      A  Pond  with  Frees 


yh 


♦)v: 


ft 


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f 


/ 


M. 


Fissure  J2.       Cid\    Moiielt 


"g 


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"r 


;^v^  |ii,u.  '»^i\  s^f 


■»mi'!^ 


% 


Figures  JJ,  J^,  JJ.      Colored  Drazvings  of  an 
Indian  Vase 


v 


^-^:§«. 


-#*' 


{  ,i  P>V^-:!^..^. 


\\V 


'.i!<    f  ^ . 


N2«^- 


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t*. 


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5^ 


Suggestions  as  to  a  Course  in  Art  Training 

Abstract  designs  call  forth  very  little  en- 
thusiasm. But  let  them  plan  a  design,  and 
execute  it,  by  carving  or  painting,  to  beau- 
tify a  vase,  or  a  workbox,  or  a  baseball  bat; 
or  design  a  cover  for  a  book  they  have  read, 
or  for  a  series  of  essays  they  have  them- 
selves written;  or  urge  them  to  look 
around  for  any  objects  of  common  use 
which,  by  decoration,  they  may  transform 
into  a  thing  of  beauty :  and  the  children  will 
at  once  become  interested  and  exhibit  an  ar- 
dor and  zeal,  and  a  fertility  of  invention 
which  it  is  a  genuine  pleasure  to  behold.  The 
decorative  effect  of  the  candlesticks  (models 
3  and  4  in  Fig.  38)  and  inkwells  (models 
6-10  on  same  plate)  is  certainly  striking.  The 
fish  design  in  Fig.  32,  invented  by  a  girl  of 
fourteen,  is  also  very  interesting. 

Much  ornamental  art  consists  of  the  repe- 
tition of  simple  figures.  It  has  been  shown* 
that  this  phenomenon  is  connected  with  a 
peculiar  tendency  of  the  mind  to  count  and 
group  objects  automatically  by  resolving 
large  numbers  into  small  groups  of  equal  or 
similar  characteristics.  This  tendency  has 
much  to  do  with  the  sense  of  rhythm  which. 


*"Some  Mental  Automatisms",  by  E.  H.  Lindley  and 
G.  E.  Partridge,  Pedagogical  Seminary  V,  i. 
Ill 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

in  turn,  is  closely  in  accord  with  the  circula- 
tory and  respiratory  rhythm.  The  idea  of 
"symmetry  enters  largely  into  the  products 
of  animal  activity,  e.  g.,  the  symmetrical 
structures  of  ants  and  spiders,  the  circular 
nests  of  fish  and  birds."  This  biological 
condition  is  probably  the  source  from  which 
our  love  of  symmetry  springs,  and  indicates 
"the  origin  not  only  of  all  conventionalisms 
in  art,  but  also  of  the  impulse  which  led  to 
an  interest  in  geometrical  science."  I  have 
quoted  the  results  of  these  interesting  inves- 
tigations because  they  corroborate  my  previ- 
ous contention  that  there  are  biological 
causes  for  many  of  the  mental  activities  with 
which  we  are  here  dealing,  and  that  we  must 
appreciate  children's  work  in  the  light  of 
manifestations  of  growth. 

As  to  the  form  of  execution,  drawing  is 
evidently  that  form  of  artistic  activity  which, 
tho  practiced  earliest,  owing  to  the  easy  ac- 
cessibility of  paper  and  pencil,  presents  the 
greatest  difficulties  to  young  children,  as  it 
requires  the  greatest  degree  of  artistic  ab- 
straction—representing, as  it  does,  the  three- 
dimensional  space  on  a  two-dimensional  sur- 
face; and  it  is  apt  to  tempt  children  into 
scribbling,   that   is   the   making   of   aimless 

112 


Suggestions  as  to  a  Course  in  Art  Training 

lines.  The  experiments  reported  in  this 
book  seem  to  show  that  modeling  offers  the 
easiest  and  most  natural  beginning  of  art  ex- 
pression. It  deals  with  three-dimensional 
masses,  and  allows  of  a  more  realistic  repre- 
sentation. Clay  permits  energetic  handling 
and  is  yet  soft  enough  to  offer  the  least  pos- 
sible resistance  to  the  feeble  fingers  of  the 
youngest  pupil.  It  appeals  to  the  sense  of 
touch  and  produces  tactile  sensations  of 
smoothness  which  have  so  much  to  do  with 
the  development  of  esthetic  emotions.  It 
strengthens  the  judgment  of  form,  and  calls 
forth  that  motor  activity  thru  which  the 
mind  acquires  so  many  of  its  most  precious 
concepts.  It  is  so  easy  to  handle  that  even 
tender  tots  can  make  wonderful  things,  and 
yet  it  permits  of  the  highest  perfection  and 
mastership. 

Leaving  out,  in  this  connection,  such  oc- 
cupations as  weaving  (in  paper,  ribbon,  and 
thread),  carving,  needle-work  and  the  like 
which  connect  art  work  proper  with  manual 
training,  as  these  exercises  have  been  re- 
ferred to  in  the  first  part  of  this  book, 
I  would  suggest  as  the  next  step,  paper 
cutting.  While  here,  the  three-dimensional 
space     is     reduced    to     a     two-dimensional 

113 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

symbol,  it  still  deals  with  tangible  ob- 
jects which  are  much  more  realistic  than 
the  mere  picture.  Children  will  often  play 
with  paper  dolls  as  gladly  as  they  do  with 
the  creatures  of  sawdust  and  porcelain,  and 
will  dress  them,  and  put  them  to  bed  with 
almost  equal  dehght.  And  then,  it  deals 
with  outlines,  with  the  silhouettes  of  objects, 
with  their  shadow-pictures.  Shadow-pic- 
tures arouse  the  children's  intensest  interest, 
as  we  all  know;  and  it  has  been  shown  in 
more  than  one  way  that  children  are  most 
concerned  in  outlines.  Of  course,  drawing 
may  also  be  in  outline;  but  paper  cutting, 
or  tearing,  has  this  advantage  that  it  is 
more  direct  and  prevents  scribbling.  It  also 
strengthens  the  child's  judgment  as  every 
cut  of  the  scissors  tells. 

Last  of  all  come  painting  and  drawing — 
with  brush  and  water  colors,  colored  cray- 
ons, pencil  and  what  not,  at  the  discretion  of 
the  teacher  who  will  adapt  himself  to  the 
varying  needs  of  the  different  ages  and  in- 
dividuals. It  is  not  intended  to  imply  that 
there  should  be  at  first  only  modeling,  then 
freehand  cutting,  and  last  drawing.  Rather 
will  the  three  forms  of  expression  go  hand 
in  hand.  But  the  work  should  be  so  directed 
as  to  produce  In  the  child's  mind  a  true  con- 
114 


Suggestions  as  to  a  Course  in  Art  Training 

ception  of  the  world  around  him,  and  to 
strengthen  his  power  of  self-expression.  In 
particular,  it  may  be  said  that  in  any  special 
series  of  exercises  the  sequence  should  be  first 
modeling,  then  cutting,  then  painting,  and 
finally  drawing.  But  do  not  tie  the  children 
down  to  minute  representations,  to  a  scale 
which  requires  great  exactness  and  fine  work. 
Grant  them  ample  space,  the  blackboard, 
large  sheets  of  paper,  large  crayons;  encour- 
age bold  lines,  bold  strokes ;  the  character  and 
swing  of  the  whole  rather  than  a  painstaking 
recording  of  details. 

Alongside  with  exercises  in  expression, 
there  should  go  a  study  of  great  models,  of 
the  masterpieces  of  art,  of  painting  and 
sculpture.  This  should  be  done  not  so  much 
for  the  purpose  of  searching  into  the  details 
of  their  technique  (tho  it  is  well  to  study 
the  master  touch,  and  to  learn  from  the 
manner  in  which  great  minds  have  expressed 
themselves)  as  to  derive  inspiration.  Art 
is  a  record  of  the  development  of  our  con- 
ception of  the  beautiful — a  record  of  the 
great  thought  development  of  the  race.  For 
in  their  art,  the  succeeding  generations  em- 
bodied their  ideals.  The  history  of  art  is  the 
history  of  ideals. 

115 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 
Conclusion 

In  closing,  my  plea  is  once  more  for  free- 
dom and  individuality.  It  is  not  for  so-call- 
ed results,  that  is  showy  products,  for  which 
we  must  strive,  but  we  must  make  this  work 
an  instrument  to  develop  the  child-soul  in  its 
integrity  and  fulness.  The  perfection  of 
the  child  must  be  the  aim,  not  a  finished  piece 
of  work  that  will  arouse  the  enthusiasm  of 
an  unpedagogical  multitude.  If  we  would 
once  begin  to  understand  that  the  real  pro- 
duct of  education  cannot  be  exhibited  and 
made  a  show  of,  but  that  it  will  reveal  itself 
in  the  life  and  character  of  the  child  when 
he  has  reached  maturity:  we  shall  learn  to 
apply  the  right  measure  to  school  instruc- 
tion, and  in  particular  to  elementary  art 
work.  This  must  be  so  conducted  that  it 
may  reveal  the  best  and  the  noblest  of  which 
the  child's  soul  is  capable,  that  it  may  be- 
come a  stimulus  and  inspiration  for  a  genu- 
ine striving  for  the  ideal.  But  unless  the 
child  is  given  latitude  to  be  himself,  to  ex- 
press himself,  and  unless  his  ideas  and  their 
expression  are  judged  from  a  child's  stand- 
point, however  crude  that  may  be;  or  if  the 
child's  natural  instincts  are  repressed  to 
ii6 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

make  way  for  artificial  methods  and  con- 
ventional systems:  art,  as  well  as  any  other 
branch  that  deals  with  emotions  and  ideals, 
will  become  a  demoralizing  element,  tempt- 
ing the  child  into  mere  outward  conformity, 
affectation  and  cant.  Art,  to  be  a  moral  in- 
fluence, must  also  make  for  truth;  it  must 
lead  forth  from  the  deep  recesses  of  our 
heart  a  revelation  of  our  most  individual 
feelings;  it  must  be  an  expression  of  all  that 
is  dear  to  our  mind,  and  sacred,  and  noble, 
and  exalted.  Art  must  serve  to  establish-  the 
right  relation  between  our  inner  self  and  our 
outer  self,  between  what  we  are  and  what  we 
seem.  The  right  kind  of  art  work  will  awak- 
en in  our  children  that  love  of  harmony  and 
order,  that  enthusiasm  for  genuineness  and 
sincerity,  that  respect  for  the  rights  and 
characters  of  others,  as  well  as  for  their 
own  true  nature  which  struggles  for  exist- 
ence and  expression;  in  short,  that  spiritual 
attitude  which  alone  will  render  their  lives 
a  revelation  of  goodness,  a  blessing  to  the 
world  they  live  in,  a  factor  in  divine  regen- 
eration. **^The  truth  alone  will  make  us  irtQ>) 
Polonius'  oft  quoted  words  find  a  ready  ap- 
plication to  all  forms  of  self-expression,  but 
notably  to  that  of  manifestation  thru  art : 
117 


Some  Fundamental  Verities  in  Education 

"To  thine  own  self  be  true, 
And  it  must  follow  as  the  night  the  day, 
Thou  canst  not  then  be  false  to  any  man." 


ii8 


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18  193i 


JAN  2  ^  1954 


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